Like fish in a barrel

Some of you may recall the saga of the fish in our pond . For those not up to speed here is a little history...
The builders created a nice looking pond in the back of the house with a large waterfall, fed from a submerged pump. Two weeks after we moved in, I decided we should put some fish in the pond, to help keep it mosquito free and clean. I took Alexander to the nearby pet store and proudly purchased 10 ‘feeder’ goldfish for $3. (The non-feeders were more expensive.)

Upon putting them in the pond I only counted 9 fish. The next day the number had fallen again to 7. By the middle of the next week, I could only see 5 and waterfall didn’t seem to be flowing quite as well. Upon investigating the pump I found that the builders had installed the most powerful pump on the market, which pumped more than 1200 gallons of water every hour! (To be like ‘Niagara Falls’ as the builder put it.) The sheer power of this pump was too much for the poor little fish and it sucked them up like a vacuum cleaner.

Well, the 5 fish thrived while we were in the UK and when we returned we saw not only 5 fat happy fish but another 5 happy baby fish. It was a real delight.

And then... one Friday a couple of weeks ago Dena gave me a call at work.
"We have an egret walking around the garden isn't that neat? I wonder what it wants."
For those of you reading from the UK, egret = a white heron.
I told Dena it wanted a fish supper and to shoo it away as fast as possible.
Alas it was too late, the bird had got our zip code.

Between 6:00 and 7:00am, as dawn broke on that Saturday morning and Dena, Alexander and I slept soundly beneath the covers: The 5 fat happy fish that had survived designation as a meal for bigger fish in the pet shop, an underwater vacuum cleaner and a summer of abandonment, met their fate at the beak of a very hungry bird doing a John Cleese impression.

The solution for the future is to get a plastic heron (they are available in the UK), paint it white, and stick it by the pond. (Herons are very territorial so I think egrets are too.)