Mourning

I guess I was in shocked to lose Chunky yesterday, I did not confront the water snake and he shows up again in late afternoon, just having a dip causally in my lily pond. He had Chunky in his stomach, I said to myself and I could not bear to stay there, walked away with sorrow in my eyes.

After some research on the internet, identify this snake is a non-venomous water snake. Because a very deadly water snake named 'Florida Cottonmouth' looks almost the same as this non-venomous water snake in my pond, the only difference is the pupil, the cottonmouth had viper pupil and aggressive; the common water snake has round pupil and less aggressive. Well, I did not want to get too close to a snake that I don't know if it's venomous or non-venomous, so I took a photo of him with my digital camera then enlarge the photo with a software on my computer, allowed me to take a close look at his pupil.

God has said I am the manager of the land, I only get to manage all the animals and creatures, I do not own them and I have no control over their lives whatsoever. If he decided the snake should feed on my fish, I wish that snake could eat something useful for me, such as frogs, lizards or field mice. So I do not want to kill that snake, it is actually beneficial to the garden to have a non-venomous snake to control other stuffs I don't like, just that it happens to munch on my beloved goldfish.

I woke up today at 6am and the first thing I did was to run out to the pond, sure enough I saw that snake again, it must thought this is its feeding ground, because I looked down and I don't see Baby anymore! This is the second goldfish he ate at my pond and I swear I must do something about it.

By 9:30am I was already at Lowe's looking at what could I get to protect my fish, I saw something repel snake in a granulate form but the instruction said it is poisons to the water nearby, should not use near any water source. That means I could have repel the snake but bring another hazard to my pond. I decided to net my pond with a screen like those in the screen enclosure department.

Very upset that I lost Baby to the snake, took a close look to another 3 adult goldfish still remain in the pond, they all have broken tail fin and CSI west palm determined that was from the chase under-water, and they were all scared showing signs of stress.

I spent 4 hours to move around the stones and stretch a screen-enclosure over the surface of the pond, thinking this could make it difficult for the snake to get in then he should go get other preys such as frogs. After a shower, I walked out and see him resting on TOP of the net, that's it! I must confront him, I went out to use a clamp to try to pinch him and he quickly retreat.

The next step would be trapping the snake, it already had two good meals at this pond and he is definitely coming back to feed on my beloved goldfish. I must do something.