EPISODE 670 DROUGHT — OUR PONDS DRY UP — AND A STRANGE DISCOVERY SENT BY ‘ROOTER”
alan skeoch nov. 1, 2022
For my lifetime tis pond has always been a source of wonder. Alinve with creatures. Tis year the pond has dried up. A muddy mess. Can our turtle colony survive? Marjorie caught one paned turtle vacating its home and searching for a watery living space. She let it go. But no place to go.
We have five ponds on the farm. Most often they are filled with water all summer long. This year the main pond is a mudhole and even front pond is reduced and reducing. This picture was taken midsummer. Today the pond is mud fringed and getting smaller and smaller.
“All seven acres of our main pond are now mud.” “What about the turtle colony on eastern edge?” “Gone. moved to the western edge where Andrew used an excavator….water still there.” “What about the leopard frogs, a few of which have survived the disease….and some of them are easy pickings for the Blue Herons with those stiletto beaks….and the garter snakes, blood suckers, mink, all the little wiggly thing that make a pond alive?” “Gone. Seems the muskrats have survived in the front pond but their living area is getting smaller and smaller.” “I found a snake in the green houses sunning itself.” “Thank Heaven for that…but can the frog population survive when its living space is decreasing to the point of unsustainability?”
Drought was a big killer…a slow killer tha packed the farm pond population into a smaller and smaller living space like that story of Edger Allan Poe and the collapsing room.
Then along came an email from Robert Rloot. “Rooter’s” story is hard to believe. I thought it was a joke and even asked Rooter if the story of the living fish in a long dead lakebed was a cruel fake. Rooter says it is not a fake. Life persists even when conditions are terrible..
what you are about to see is startling….I couldn’t believe it at first. So asked Rooter again if he believed it. He said he does. And he was head of science at Parkdale C. I. where we both taught. Even so, I bet few readers will believe this video.
alan Skeoch