Froggy Bottoms, Take II

We had a very productive weekend, so much to cover. The main objective was to keep working on the backyard garden area since the front is taken care of. The Gnomeslayer and I went to Across the Pond yesterday, and picked out some accent rocks for the streambed that we are going to put in. Today the objective was to get the current pond cleaned out, get the filter/pump cleaned out and get the fish ready for the winter.

I will go into a flashback sequence here and say that probably two weeks ago, we noticed some very large frog eyes in the pond. Today we plugged a drain hose on the pump and started draining it out. I had a bucket that we were going to keep the fish in while we got the liner cleaned out. Q started fishing around with the net to try to catch them as the pond went down. We have four ornamental goldfish in the pond. He caught the first pretty quick, but then was having problems because some of the edging stones had fallen in the pond. So I got on the pond gloves and started to pull them out. There were a couple of times that I must have brushed against the fish before I got the rest of the rocks out. And then Q said "What the *bleep* is that? I looked down and there was a bullfrog peering up at me. Now our "pond" is 40 gallons. A bullfrog in a 40 gallon pond doesn't leave room for much else. GS took that opportunity to grab a slimy rock from the side of the pond so I took her in to wash her hands. While I was gone Q kept trying to catch the frog. As we were walking back outside, he netted it and brought it over to show me. I grabbed the camera to try to get a picture. The frog hopped out of the net and started hopping around the patio. He doubled back and landed on my foot (which wasn't covered since I was wearing moccasins). I will admit, I shrieked like a little schoolgirl, which must have really made our neighbors wonder about me. He hopped through the garden area and lodged himself between the fencepost and a slat on the fence.

We finished up our work and discovered that three of our fish were missing. To be honest I wouldn't have thought that a bullfrog could have eaten fish that big. When we got finished I went in and looked through my water gardening books and lo and behold, discovered that bullfrogs will eat anything that they can stuff into their mouth. This includes goldfish, mice, small birds and frogs smaller than themselves. I didn't want the bullfrog to get back into our newly cleaned pond, so I went to pull him out of his hiding spot. Unfortunately he wasn't cooperative, and his belly was pretty big, probably full of our goldfish that he was digesting. I ended up having to push out on the slat and keep poking at him to make him move. I finally got him, and went to hold up my prize to show GS and Q. In retrospect I should have had him get the camera and take a picture but it was getting dark and I wanted to get him moved. He took a big (assisted) hop over the back fenceline. Anyway, that was probably the biggest excitement of the weekend. My poor little fishies...RIP.