Pond Death

The saddest story I know

There was an empty little concrete pond in my backyard when we moved to Santa Cruz. It was shaped like a peanut and had some rocks at one end where there was a fountain that once trickled water in. It was a blast reviving it, filling it up, building up the fountain, and planting reeds and lilypads and other pond flora. We also added some goldfish and a turtle. The goldfish, we were told, would grow some.The small red eared turtle would co-habitate nicely with the goldfish. I worked hard on setting up the entire scene; it was really sweet. Until the raccoons came.

The first time it happened a single large raccoon arrived in the night and destroyed the entire set up — thrashing all the plants and killing at least one of the goldfish. Sad, but mostly angry, I cleaned up the mess the next day, and got some new plants and another goldfish. I could still see the turtle, who we called “Ret” (he was a Red-Eared Turtle, after all) hunkered down on the murky bottom, concealed by a rock, but the goldfish still looked freaked out. Soon the water cleared and everything returned to normal. But not for long.

A few weeks later the raccoon returned with her family, waking me up in the middle of the night with them splashing and marauding the pond. I scared them away but in the morning I could see they had wiped out the plant life again and all the…