We lost our favorite and prettiest koi—the smallest—to a predator. I found a track I’m pretty sure was a raccoon in the mud from the drain near a break in the gate. We’re so upset. She was gorgeous, and ate from your hand. And the butterfly-fins are just a little less agile in the water. We have ample cover for them, and we lost no others, but I spent some time today repairing a sprung board in the gate: we’ve tried screws, glue, and all sorts of fixes, and it keeps coming loose: this time I got a metal-bit and got a bolt all the way through it, with a washer to hold the bolt head from working through. I also laced the area with a noxious mix of pepper oil powder and yes, coyote urine powder. And we’re filling in under the fence with gravel.
It’s nature. You can’t complain. But you can make the fences better and put up a ‘no visitors’ sign in raccoon-ish.
Evil, evil raccoons — the bane of my water garden dreams of grandeur.
Coyote urine. Comes from Shake-away. That and good fences. And hiding places. Once the koi hit a certain size, they’re safer from raccoons and herons…and you only have to worry about ospreys.
Our little water garden is the only source of continuously available drinking water in the neighborhood for animals and the chain link fence around the yard is eminently climbable by the critters. I guess I want them to have a life too, just not tear out the plants in my small (~120 gallons) pond and the gold fish we used to put in their (now the fish live permanently inside in a fishtank.
“Naturam expellas furca tamen usque recurret” – Horace, Epistles I.x
You may drive Nature out with a pitchfork, but she will keep coming back.
oh dear, that’s very sad …. 🙁
Assuming that your remark relates to the Horace quote, Horace was actually a great nature lover. He addresses this poem to a city guy who isn’t. He is telling him that Nature will triumph in the end whether he likes it or not.
🙂
The complete sentence in the poem is,
Naturam expellas furca tamen usque recurret
et mala perrumpet furtim fastidia victrix.
You may drive Nature out with a pitchfork, but she will keep coming back,
Stealthily break through your miserable distaste – and win.
It sounds much better in Latin. Especially since Latin word-order is very flexible, and when he speaks about Nature breaking through, the words actually break through the line as well. The words ‘perrumpet furtim’ (will stealthily break through) really break through in between the words ‘mala fastidia’ (miserable aversions, or distaste).
Oh no, poor fish. Hope your preventative measures work.
We have a hoard of turtle doves that roost in the trees bordering the fence all year long. Occasionally, but usually in winter, we’ll find feathers scattered over a portion of the garden where a hawk had caught one and had dinner. Not upsetting–it’s just nature–until the dogs find the leavings. Birds, live or dead, make them very happy and they inhale/roll in/absorb all the birdness they can.
You really don’t want raccoons around–they’re a reservoir for rabies.
Right, Herwin. I really don’t. They’re charming little bandits, but they are carriers, as are skunks. I hope the coyote urine will keep them out of here.
There is a method of keeping out larger winged predators, which is to string wire strands about a foot and a half apart from roof to roof across the garden—visually they disappear. But you have to put small flutter-strips on them so the birds are warned off and don’t actually hit them. I’d hate to injure a bird, even one bent on dinner. I’ve thought of doing it if I have more trouble with that Great Blue Heron that came by last year, but I do feed smaller birds, and I would hope they would simply regard those wires as another perch (thereby decorating the ground below with bird-poo) and slip right through them. But thus far, no heron. I thought that might have been the problem until I found that little raccoon paw-print…and I’m pretty sure it’s a raccoon and not another sort of predator like an otter or the like: we’re way too high up from the river to have them paying a call. We have coyotes and families of marmots trotting down the paved urban street now and again, across two major arterials, and bears occasionally visit on the other height of the city, moose down in the valley, but no otters.
We have coyotes, raccoons, fisher cats (which are not cats at all), wild turkey, deer, possums, and pheasant, so far. No problems with the pond,as yet, but it has nothing in it but a few frogs. It’s not full yet as Proge finds it easier to do the rock work above water. It will be interesting to see what happens next year. I think Breezy the Dog does a lot to keep animals out of the immediate yard. 8)
Rabies is everywhere these days as is EEE, bird flu and lyme with it’s attendant diseases. It *really* is not as bad as it sounds!
Yes, I know I misspelled ‘it’s’ should be a ‘its’. I am a little wacky with a tooth infection, massive antibiotics, pain killers. Life is never boring! 😉