Unnatural Habitat

On our most recent walk at the college, Sam and I were stunned to see the duck-less duck pond getting torn apart. We'd been over to the college about a week earlier and the pond, though still a depressing shadow of it's former self, looked the same as it always had, recently speaking, that is - overgrown, duck-less and depressing. At least, though, it was still partially filled with what was presumably "water".

But not the other night. The other night, the fence was partially torn down. Trees were partially cut down. And the so-called "water" was little more than a pool of disgusting looking muck (ok, so not much change there).

So what's going on? We're not quite sure. 

Near the end of our walk, we came upon a guy who seemed, by virtue of his intimate knowledge - both school building-wise and pond-wise, to be someone who worked at the school (officially or unofficially, we're not quite sure). 

According to this guy, they were dredging the pond. That would explain the dredging equipment. Beyond that, he wasn't sure what the plan was. 

He did, however, enlighten us as to the mystery of the no-more-ducks. According to this guy, who I will now call "Bob", the disappearance of the ducks had nothing to do with the so-called hoax known as climate change - or the possibly related rapid increase in algae growing in the now (or once) putrid smelling and putrid looking so-called "water".  

No. According to Bob, the ducks were gone for two reasons: a red tailed hawk nesting in the nearby birch trees and later, a turtle, presumably of the snapping variety, which some lady had for some reason released into the pond.

Bob said that the hawk had started feasting on the ducks after getting tired of chasing down the nearby rabbits. (Actually, Bob didn't say anything about the hawk actually getting tired of chasing the rabbits, but he did mention the hawk chasing the rabbits and I can only assume that the hawk wised-up and found the ducks were a lot less effort to catch. Plus, there's still a lot of rabbits around. Ipso facto.)

Bob said that the turtle only added to the problem. After the lady dropped it off (I'm assuming Bob witnessed this), the turtle began eating the frogs. This seemed entirely plausible to me because now that Bob mentioned it, it seemed to me there were indeed considerably fewer frogs - I had just been distracted by the more devastating (and visible) loss of the ducks. 

Anyway, when the frog population dropped, the turtle joined the hawk and also started going after the ducks. (Presumably the hawk and turtle were working on an individual basis. I don't think there was a formal hawk-turtle alliance).

Bob went into a fair amount of detail about this; about how there would be about a dozen ducklings in the morning and a day or two later, it would be about half of that. A day or so after that, about half again. Bob also went into specifics, casually, about how the ducks were getting killed. I won't repeat the specifics of it here but let's just say it involved the ducks and the throats they used to have.

At some point, Bob mentioned that he finally caught the turtle and released it a mile or so away, down-river, in a more natural habitat. Good move on Bob's part, if you ask me. I didn't think to ask Bob what he planned to do about the hawk.

Anyway, it was getting late, my legs were getting tired and Sam was already grossed-out. Plus, as I said, Bob didn't know what was going to happen to the pond.

Sam and I said goodbye to Bob, thanked him for his wealth of knowledge, and we headed home - slightly more informed and significantly more disgusted than when we left.