This was the view when I got back to the office this week. Contrast that with the highest flooding we'd seen previously.

Spurred on by the heavy rains and warmer temps our backyard and the pond started thawing out. By the middle of the week half of the ice was melted off the pond. Unfortunately that is when I discovered that Whitey and the other light colored fish had died (along with a half dozen frogs, but that's normal).

This was their second winter in the backyard pond. It was another nasty winter but I managed to keep a hole in the ice throughout. Actually I thought all of the baby fish would perish, but there's about twenty of them swimming around as if winter never happened.

We'll miss ol' Whitey. He'd been with us for over five years, two ponds, and wintering indoors in too-small aquariums with only a noodle-head cat for company.