About 2 weeks ago now we had a frog (actually a toad -but more about that later) die in our pond. My first clue was the Stink. It was after a few days with temperatures over 100 F, and by the time I found it, it was well on it's way to decomposing - yes, even I was grossed out! I disposed of it quickly by throwing it over the fence before the girls came out to see what I was up to. But the whole pond still stank.
Then last week I came out one evening to find our two remaining gold fish, that I had grown quite attached to, were floating lifeless on the surface. I was quite disturbed- thought it must be something we had done wrong to kill them. We held a little burial for them with the children, who didn't seem very phased at all.
Kurt tossed some bleach and and pool acid into the pond after that and it cleared the water nicely, and I found a place nearby where they tested our water for us. They told us it was looking good, so we bought some more fish .... did you know you could buy tiny little gold fish for 12 cents each! Unfortunately though... we have had a number of them die too. It is very frustrating .. do not know WHY! We do have 2 hypotheses though: 1. the pet store put too many fish in the small packet - (by the time we arrived home some were already dead)... and 2.(this one explains the origional goldfish deaths) the gold fish ate TOAD eggs which were poisonous.
Yes, early last week we heard toads at our pond (we haven't heard them for a few weeks) again. Mila went out and reported there were 2 frogs -a Mom and Dad. We thought nothing of it until I found strings of jell like stuff with brown oval eggs in them. Up till this point I thought we had frogs ... but when I looked up frogs eggs ... they did not look like this. And with further research I discovered a comment by someone who said their fish died after toads layed eggs in their pond (similarities...) and a response to this comment that toads are poisonous and that fish are usually not stupid enough to eat more than a few (because this makes them sick). Apparently our fish were not the brightest!
It is quite fun to have a pond full of toadpoles, though... they grow by the day. These pics of Gulf Coast Toads show nicely one of the little science projects going on in our home .... I have taken some pics myself but not nearly as good as these! They sound like this. We are at the "toadpole stage" now;)
But back to this important topic of death... On Friday, a dove was lying outside our back door. It looked sick, possibly wounded and it was pouring with rain outside. My instinct was to leave it alone, but when ants started to crawl on it and a fly landed on it I couldn't help myself - I went outside to collect it (with gloves) and bring it inside to dry off and warm up. InitiallyI thought it would die quickly. I considered my care purely palliative. It seemed to perk up very quickly though and had me thinking that we might have (another) longer term pet. On friday afternoon, however, while Mila was holding it and trying to get it to drink some water, it died quite suddenly. One minute it was alive and then next he was limp ... a massive heart attack or something?
Did it also eat the toads eggs?
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