Our pond got hit pretty hard by the recent rains. It was flooded for a couple of weeks with all of the nearby soils, mulch, and lawn run-off turning the water a murky brown. The extra nutrients along with PH changes really made the string algae happy and it grew like a, well, a weed.

Lots of water above ground means lots of water IN the ground. Oddly enough a hole in the ground doesn't care how water fills it: from inside a rubber liner above, or from ground water seepage below. That means if you drain the water from above (in the liner), water in the ground from below will push up to replace it, making the rubber liner bulge upwards. Not immediately intuitive but after a few years of seeing this happen I'm starting to figure it out.

Short story is the increased ground water pressure caused the liner to pull away from some sealant and develop a leak. The last week has been a balancing act of trying to drain the pond AND keep the ground water below drained as well, at least long enough to fix everything. For some reason this made the string algae even happier. The frogs were in heaven, only the fish seemed to be a little concerned about the decreasing water levels.

Yesterday I finished the repairs and by evening was slowly filling the pond back up, the waterfall running once again. Everyone was happy. Frogs and fish jumping, toads breaking out into song, the works...a real Disney moment.

As I sat on the pond's edge, taking this in and enjoying the clear evening sky, I noticed a large flying "thing" heading towards the pond. It was twenty feet or so in the air and making its descent. A little smaller than a hummingbird, at first I thought maybe a hummingbird moth, but the wings seemed stubbier.

No noise from the wings (i.e. beetle flapping) as it made a one hundred an eighty degree bank on the end of the pond, about six feet over my head. It flew towards the other end of the pond, slowly bleeding off altitude, and made another u-turn. This time it was only a few feet above my head as it approached and then banked back the other direction. It made a final turn at the end of the pond and my rough calculations determined that I was going to get a face full of flying bug on the next pass.

Before I could formulate my plan the bug, mid-way over the pond, did a sudden dive right into the water and disappeared.

?!

I was stunned. When you get to a certain age you start to think that you've pretty much seen most odd things, at least with bugs and animals in your backyard. I can clearly say that I've never seen anything like that. Faith (happy anniversary sweetie!) was in the garden putting some of her starts in and listening to my repeated exclamations of "holy crap!" and "What the...?"

The frogs and fish kept jumping. The toads sang keening love songs. A lone airplane blinked across the night sky. No bug emerged to fly away.

Zeke and I saw a black bear on the drive in to work. All in all a good day.

Update: iChatting about this with Laura this morning and she thought that what I saw was a toe biter bug. Nasty!