One of the greatest pleasures of country life is ducks on a pond.
One of the biggest bummers is raccoons eating your ducks, which the females will do certain times of year when they need more protein.
It took a lot of digging on the internet a couple of years ago to determine that they indeed aren't the cute little vegetarians the fawning teenage girls think they are.
When I started posting on some forums asking how to discourage raccoons from visiting this particular pond and dining on my waterfowl (plenty of frogs, fish, and crawdads in other ponds they can help themselves to), I got quite a bit of hateful mail from said fawning cheerleaders. They proclaimed with no small measure of vitriol and a very small measure of literacy that I should be ashamed of my stupid self for making people think raccoons eat pretty much any danged thing they can get their hands on. Including cute little duckies.
The duck-killing was happening at a time that the raccoons were also hanging out on the roof of the pool-house, eating pears out of a nearby tree, and crapping all over the roof.
I'd finally figured out it was raccoons getting the ducks when 3 of them were killed and eaten *in their shed* one night. Takes a heckuva nimble, clever animal to pry the door open enough to get in. And unmistakable "handprints" everywhere.
I was not enamored of them.
So when I started getting these hateful teeny-bopper emails, I started replying with things like "The pelts are only worth $15 each here. Are they worth more in your state?" or "Do you think I'd get more for the pelts if I head-shot them with a rifle instead of shredding them with the shotgun?"
I'm sure they're alright in their own way, but I loves my duckies and hates any varmint that eats them. My wife gets a kick out of me; big, gruff, hirsute guy who loves duckies like my daughter loves her kitties.
That said, when I got home tonight, my wife told me she heard the ducks carrying on quite a bit. Went out and only saw 4 instead of the expected 5. Later, when I was trying to get them into their shed (they're new, so they haven't figured out that's where the food is yet -- the shed is also new and guaranteed varmint-proof), I found the missing one.
Some animal had killed it right on the shore of the pond then left it there. It looked like its neck had been broken. No blood. Very few feathers scattered about. Not one bite taken out of it.
What on earth does that???
Speaking of animals that piss me off.... Herons. I think they're awesome birds, and one of the coolest things is to watch them take off.
I've got a lake and 4 ponds, and the lake and two of the ponds are full of game fish. Don't mind them getting weeded out, as they tend to get pretty crowded.
But the herons seem to prefer goldfish and koi. Perhaps because I've got them trained to follow me around the pond waiting for me to throw food in. I'm sure they follow the herons, expecting a meal.
A single heron can completely wipe out a pond in a matter of days. I keep chasing one away from my biggest koi pond (which is also my duck pond), and have noticed there are far fewer fish now than the 200 koi and 1000 goldfish I stocked it with in the spring. The previous year, when drought made the pond real shallow, the herons got every single fish, including many I'd paid $50-$75 each for.
I think I've finally hit upon an idea for the heron problem, though. They're territorial, so maybe they won't visit a pond that has a fake heron in it. Failing that, maybe they would get the hint if the surface were littered with barely-floating fake herons and maybe a few hanging from the trees for good measure.
And maybe coon-skin hats for the ducks? |
