Since Boxing Day is only in the UK and Canada, I guess it must be Wrestling Day here. It was a holiday, since Christmas Day was on Sunday, but I decided to accomplish something because it was so warm, and the ice had melted off the pond. I finally cleaned out the non-hardy floating plants that I’d meant to get back in…oh, late October or early November. P was so sick then, though, that I had a lot more to do. Anyway, I netted them out, and then picked through everything to minimize collateral damage. I found lots of snails (pond and two kinds of rams), scuds, damselfly larvae, and half a dozen bullfrog tadpoles. I do not anticipate a shortage of bullfrogs in 2017.

I startled Cletus when I first started, so I know he’s still around, but I was rather shocked to realize that as I was scooping, I caught something a whole lot larger than a tadpole along with the plant matter…I caught Bertha!

She’s a big girl, and I’m sure she’s responsible for at least some of the tadpoles I found. Thankfully, it was cool enough that she was sluggish, and even then, she wasn’t really easy to catch. I made sure she got safely back in her pond.

I’m sure the pond’s inhabitants weren’t happy I cleared out all that stuff, but I really didn’t have a choice. Frozen, it wouldn’t be really harmful, but once it thawed in spring, it would make a hell of a mess of the water, and the water quality, so it had to go. There’s enough gunk on the bottom that they’ll be able to sleep the rest of the winter in (relative…it’s winter) comfort.