The mystery mass die-off appears to have ended.
We never managed to find a pond expert to come and sort us out, but in lieu of that, our very game builder did his best. Apparently he joined several Facebook pond interest groups and everything. The most obvious problem was that the solar pump was no longer working, so he got an electrician in to replace it. That seemed to help, and the water did start looking much clearer, but I was still dubious because the builder said he found this bit of pipe at the bottom of the pond that wasn’t attached to anything, so he just took it out. It’s lying on the side of the pond still.
Well, I’m no expert either, but doesn’t this look like a filter thingy that might be helpful in some way? In any event, while musing a plan for going forward, and in the absence of a corpse of poor Mudwiggle, I’ve been continuing to sprinkle in the occasional fish food. Not the one that was so unpopular with his departed comrades, either, but rather the fish flakes that I so foolishly abandoned earlier in the year. Well, blow me down of if I didn’t spot Mudwiggle looking hale and hearty, if a little skittish, one night last week. This brought two things to mind. One was that the pond was now clearly capable of sustaining life, and two, that the poor thing must be lonely, and still probably traumatised by the seemingly systematic extermination of his pond mates. We determined then to buy him some more friends. Sorry, but this is what I’ve been leading up to this whole post, in my typical circumlocutory fashion.
I was too embarrassed to go back to the last pet shop, too afraid of close questioning in the event that they recognised me. Off to Animates it was then, last Wednesday. I took a different offspring with me this time, not deliberately but rather as a result of availability on the day. Even though they’re all students, it isn’t always possible for them to drop everything to help their poor mother out, or so I’ve been told. The offspring are all generally helpful in this sort of situation, but they do share one weakness, which is choosing the most hideous loser fish that you could possibly imagine would be available for purchase. To my credit, although I’m still second guessing myself, I refused to buy the nasty flesh coloured nightmare that was Samantha’s first choice, and we settled on these two.
My one, on the right, is quite unexceptionable, but Samantha’s second choice still has a couple of disturbing features. One is the weirdly shaped pupil, or possibly strangely pigmented iris, which you can see in the above photo. The other is the black mark in the top lip, weirdly reminiscent of an infamous historical figure.
We have named them Adolf and Eva. One offspring rudely suggested on the family chat that it was to protect our feelings in the event of an early demise of one or the other (or both), a comment which I found needlessly hurtful. I should possibly point out, though, that we poured some more gravel into the pond just before introducing the new fish, and poor Mudwiggle hasn’t been seen since. It would be sadly ironic if he should be buried under a landslide just before finally being able to meet some new friends. I wonder if a pond can be haunted?