Monthly Archives: May 2015

Goldfish Emergency

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NOT WAVING BUT DROWNING…Goldfish Emergency

Elementary Fish Keeping: Lesson One

We knew Paul, Lewis and Stewart, Herbie’s goldfish, were tough; they’d survived the winter and also not been fed for 11 months.

But when your goldfish spend all their time with their little noses at the surface of the pond, they are not being friendly and sociable, but MOUTHING SILENT CRIES OF HELP AS THEY SLOWLY ASPHYXIATE.

It was too late to save brave little Lewis and Paul, who lost the battle against total lack of oxygen.

But maybe not too late for Stewart.

Luckily we live near the The Best Fish-Keeping Shop in the Universe, the Goldfish Bowl, where Barry was able to declare our water to be deadly poisonous and tell us what to do to stop the catastrophe.

Elementary Fish Keeping : Lesson Two

Even if you’ve got frogs in it, your pond may not be the harmonious ecosystem you think it is. Too many snail suicides and too much sludge may have turned your water toxic.

We are not proud of our negligent and woeful fish-keeping. But Stewart is still afloat and the frog triplets are keeping him company until our pond water is declared safe for more aquatic life forms.

Sketching Weakly Al Fresco

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Sketching Weakly has been Out & About in Norfolk, often in pubs…al fresco 01Every pub needs its own chickens. (The Hare Arms)

al fresco 02These ladies are painted on the side of that baby elephant.

al fresco 04al fresco 03A bit of a chestnut tree.

The swifts are back

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swiftsThey’re squealing across the sky.

spacecatBonzetta, our Animals Correspondent, points out:

Technically none of the above birds is a swift.

This is a swift:

swiftThey’ve been in southern and equatorial Africa for the winter and they spend all their lives miraculously on the wing. Almost impossible to catch but delicious as a pre-dinner snack, possibly with a tasty dipping sauce.

Note: Sketching Weakly is not endorsing serving swifts as a cocktail party snack, and thinks they are much better left freewheeling their way round the sky. Here’s some more about the incredible Swift, and also about how modern houses don’t have the sorts of holes in them swifts need to make their nests in.