Before I tell you about Thursday there is something I wanted to share that I saw Wednesday and forgot to put in the previous post. A black bird showed up and had something in it's mouth. I put the binoculars on him and saw he was carrying around a dragon fly. Apparently he was having a problem eating it so was doing what I consider either odd or possibly ingenious. The black bird was dipping the dragon fly in the water (do you think they learn this from watching hot dog eating contests?). The bird hopped down to the water, dipped the dragon fly and then tried to get in into it's mouth. Back to the water, try to eat, back to the water.... It finally flew away with it's prize firmly in beak.
Thursday:
As you know from my previous post the 7500 GPH pond pump died. I fired up the 10,000 GPH pump to keep most of the water moving while awaiting the delivery of the replacement pump scheduled for Friday AM.
When I got up Thursday morning I found the skimmer pond had lost more than half of it's water! That's around 1000 gallons of water. HOLY MOLY!!! Of course I turned the pump off and easily found a trail of water leading from the far side of the bridge.
My theory is the 10,000 GPH pump raises the water level in the bridge pond about 2 or 3 inches higher than when the 7500 GPH pump is in service. This increase in water level reached someplace that either has a hole or the liner has slipped down below this "new" water level. I'm not going to get excited about finding and fixing it right now but will put it on my "to do" list.
I also found our heroine Joe trapped in the skimmer pond. With the water level so low she couldn't crawl out. I took my hoe and gently slid it under her and she just sat on it while I played elevator and moved her to the rim of the pond and she slowly moved into her pond. It was almost like she expected me to rescue her. Later that morning she was resting under the bridge no doubt a little put our with me for scaring all the birds away. WOW, two rescues in two days.
The Woody that was rescued Wednesday is still in it's burrow.
Since the skimmer pond was now close to empty I decided this was a prefect time to clean it. Well, actually not perfect but an opportune time since I had lost so much water. The down side to doing this now was the toadpoles living in the skimmer pond. I didn't want to wash them away.
I finished draining the skimmer pond and in the 6 inch deep puddle that was left were about 75 toadpoles. I got a bucket and started catching them. I caught most before I moved ahead with the cleaning.
The pond was in need of cleaning... really needy. It stunk down there. There were inches of black muck that had built up over time and lots of rock, my screwdriver.. a bit rusty now, the remains of the original waterfall that fell off two winters ago and some of the dead mats of string algae.
So I got the hose and buckets and shovels and rakes and hoes and jumped in. I squirted and shoveled muck into the buckets. Hauled it away. Shoveled rocks into buckets. Hauled it away. I squirted some more and pumped out the crud. I worked at this for about 6 or 7 hours. I finally quit as the pond was looking pretty good and I was tired and Thor.
Yes, Thor was the intended word. Back when frogs had tails and ruled the world, Thor, the God of Thunder, went to a party. At the party Thor got hooked up with Venus, the Goddess of Beauty and Love and Fertility. They danced and drank and had a great time at the party. About 2 o'clock in the morning they left the party headed for Thor's pad. Once there one thing lead to another and they wound up making mad passionate love until the sun had risen. Thor gets out of bed and as he passes a mirror he looks at his muscular body. He flexes his muscles and admires his physique. Consumed with narcissism he roars, "I AM THOR!" This of course gets Venuses attention and she peak out from under the covers. She says, "Your Thor, I can hardly walk!"
That's what I meant when I said I was tired and Thor... what she said.
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