Beware - gulls killed our precious fish (From Dorset Echo)

Beware - gulls killed our precious fish

5:30pm Monday 6th July 2009

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A terrible event happened in a quiet suburb of Dorchester at the weekend, shattering the peace as several residents were snatched from their homes of many years and violently murdered.

The victims were fish who lived in garden ponds for many years, growing from small tiddlers to large glossy specimens.

Ours were named after friends and family by our kids a decade before. Bill and Tess, Debbie and Dodge etc.

My husband called them his ‘girls’ and would sit watching them after a hard day at work.

Thanks to the seagulls who have moved in down the road our neighbours lost all 11 of theirs on Friday, and we lost nine. The remaining two were both damaged by peck marks.

We were woken at 5am on Saturday with seagulls circling the house screeching away and dive-bombing other birds driving them away. It reminded me of Alfred Hitcock’s famous film.

We got up to watch out of the window, and saw a gull dive into our pond and thrash around trying to catch a fish, the water splashing everywhere. He was just getting out as my husband ran outside to chase him of and he took off with a large goldfish in his beak, dropping it to the path where it flip flopped about, my husband ran to save it, but the gull dived down and snatched the fish back and flew off.

We surveyed the pond. It was muddy and we couldn’t see any fish, but hoped that some had survived and were hiding as they had a large pipe lying at the bottom of the pond that they would swim through in a shoal.

We put some netting over the pond, and I sat down with a cup of tea to sea if any fish were left. I turned round to find the seagull at my side, bold as brass, his head on one side as he considered the pond and its new covering.

He took off and flew across the road to another pond and dropped down. Luckily those neighbours were able to chase him off with their dogs.

I would advise any Dochester resident who has fish in their pond to make it gull proof ASAP before they suffer the fate of ours.

Gill Harrison, Hutchins Close, Dorchester.

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