Koi Pond

In our last home we had a Koi pond in the back yard. We lived in a wooded neighborhood near Piedmont Park in Atlanta with several centuries old trees towering over our house and yard. Our pond, small as it was, attracted a lot of birds, even flocks of hundreds of migrating Cedar Waxwings twice a year.

When our Koi started disappearing one summer we first suspected a cat. Not a specific cat, maybe ours, maybe a neighbors. We also had to consider it might be a bird. There was a resident Hawk and occasional Falcon visits. I once saw a Falcon take a pigeon off our neighbors porch and settle on top of a telephone pole to devour it. After doing a little research we decided a Heron would be more likely but we had only had one Heron sighting and that wasn’t recent.

One evening I walked out of the back door onto the small deck that overlooked the backyard just in time to see a large brown blur strike at the pond and then rise up and land on a tree limb just 15 feet from my head. It was a very large Great Horned Owl and there he sat with our largest Koi in his mouth. Sadly, as he started chomping he dropped the Koi on the ground in the narrow space between our house and the one next door. By then I had called a few friends out from the house to see this beautiful creature. Presumably not appreciating the audience the Owl flew off instead of retrieving his snack.

A little while later I wrote this haiku:

the great white horned owl
perched on a low limb at dusk
empty koi pond

We continued to restock the pond.