We had one of those when I was a kid, although it was pretty small. I would feed grand daddy lfishong legs to the fish just to watch the suck in the body and have the legs hanging from their mouths. Out biggest struggle were the raccoons coming out for the buffet.
Funny you should say that...I've seen blue herons at the runoff ponds most large business parks have (I used to keep binoculars at my desk), but I don't recall ever seeing any predatory birds at the pond we had when I was a kid. Maybe it's because it was so small.
They never made it into the pond but we're at the perimeter, my dog had a great sense when they were there and with bark like crazy. We would let her out and She chased the Heron who would normally fly to the top of the barn. It was quite a picture with a Heron the roof of the barn and the dog up on two legs leaning on the Barn barking.
So where was this? Maryland? I've rarely seen those birds (or really any aquatic fowl for that matter) in Virginia, almost exclusively at large drainage ponds. You must have had some larger body of water around, huh?
My late husband decided to try breeding seahorses, so we got 11 nice males and let them get accustomed to the tank. Then we bought a big healthy female and introduced them. She was swishing her way around the tank in a "HELLOOOO SAILOR!!!" manner but the laddies were huddling over in the coral, terrified and wouldn't go anywhere near her. Wouldn't you know it? Eleven gay seahorses..... Of course, since it's the males who actually carry the young, maybe they were just afraid of fatherhood.....or would that be motherhood? Anyway, the problem was solved when the tank heater malfunctioned and cooked 'em all.
Long Island New York, we're surrounded by water. I believe what we see here is an egret which is a smaller version of the Heron, but in the same family.
Mary, Interesting, I wonder if they're like hamsters. The female adult hamster will hurt or kill the male if there put together and she's not ready to mate.
We were thinking that maybe our boys were a little too young and still thought girl seahorses had cooties or something. Whatever the problem was, she was ready to get jiggy wid it and they weren't.
When I was a kid, my mom had all kinds of tropical fish, and she raised guppies and even sold some to the local Five and Dime store (Ben Franklins’). When we went to Spokane , she would go to the pet store and find the prettiest male guppies with those long wavy tails, so she usually got some really flashy looking babies from them. She had one of those little net things that the babies could get through and the mother could not, and raised the babies in a special tank. One of the things that I remember most about having fish was the “wild goldfish” that we had when I was little. A couple miles out of town, there were two little lakes, and at one time, someone must have turn loose some goldfish in both of them. I don’t remember there being any other fish besides the goldfish, and some of them were close to a foot long. We would go out to the lakes and my folks would catch the goldfish, and Mom had a bucket that she would save the ones that she wanted to keep. Since they were large, she kept them outside in one of those big galvanized laundry tubs for the summer. When it started getting cold for winter, they had to go back to the lake, which was deep enough for the fish to survive the harsh Idaho winters. They are not there anymore, because for some reason the fish and game people decided to poison all of the goldfish, and planted some other kind of regular fish in the ponds. One day we went out to get fish, and they had all been poisoned, and it was a shame to see so many beautiful (harmless( fish laying on the shore dead. There are a whole lot of lakes around Sandpoint and Lake Pend Oreille (ponderay), so it was not like these two little lakes needed to be stocked with fish. Here is a screenshot of the area, and you can see the little lakes, just above the one called Heath Lake. By the way, as an aside, the Heaths were related to Sarah Palin. She was born in Sandpoint, and the Heaths (who the lake is named for, and might have owned the lake at that time) were her parents.
I once had a prairie dog we call Tippy. We found him at a local pet shop, my daughter like him, so me and my wife purchase him for her. We were told prairie dogs don't bite, that was not true. While they didn't try 2 rip your finger off, they did nip.Both I and my wife got nipped while handling him. Funny thing was my daughter never got nipped. I think she was just gentler while handling him.
That's a shame that they had to eliminate the goldfish. I always took them to be a community fish and harmless to other fish. They are in the carp family, and the pond/lakes by me have carp living side-by-side with perch, sunnies, bass, etc.
I found a photo of the cotton-top marmoset from 1967 we had as a pet. We named him Casey after the TV show Ben Casey, who's dr. Zorba had a similar hairstyle. He lived about two years then pass. One day at work I was at lunch one of the acquaintances I had join me I told him about Casey. Wines up he was the president of some monkey Club of Long Island, I can't remember there exact name. He tells me that by the symptoms my marmoset had a form of rickets. In their natural habitat South America they live in the top of the trees, therefore did plenty of sunshine and tons of vitamin D. We decided to try Casey II, and give him vitamin D supplements everyday. I don't know what's the life expectancy is cotton-top marmoset but he lived about 4 years. They say marmoset is it cross between a monkey and a squirrel. I know I have better photos than this this is all I can find right now.
As a kid the usual dogs. Allergic to cats. But my oldest was a real Ellie Mae Clampett..doodle bugs, rabbit, little duck, pregnant dog, mice, guenie pig..named Barney but turned out to be a Bernadette.I never knew what that child would bring home next. Scooter the turtle. Can't remember them all.