DocAndersen
The Walrus was a song from the Beatles (I am the Walrus). We did not have sea lions, seals or Walrus (what is plural for Walrus, Walri?) in our pond. We did have two types of turtles. The one in the last few pictures is a common or sometimes called flatbill or Mud Turtle. The other type of turtles in the pond was the larger (more aggressive) Alligator snapping turtles. But the mud turtles enjoyed the pond as well. The ponds were created as a way to handle overflow water from the neighborhood. Concrete doesn’t absorb water at the same rate that grass does. The more concrete, asphalt roofs, and asphalt in a neighborhood, the more water has nowhere to go.
So the builder put in what are called retention pongs. In the case of our house in Indiana, the retention ponds were dams placed and areas dugout, along the creek bed. Where the turtles wandered in on their own, either coming downstream with the creek or upstream along with the creek, humans added the fish. Snakes, Turtles, and Muskrats, Beaver and Herons’ all made it to the pond on their own. The wintering Geese hung out on the pond on their own. But the many fish were put there by neighbors. There were bluegills and bass. The frogs were all around the pond area, but more in the trees (tree frogs) than in the actual water. The frogs tended to live in the creek side of the pond.
At the end of our yard was on the left side, a railroad trestle. The creek ran under the trestle into the first retention pond. The pond always had a delightful smell (decaying everything) in the summer. In the dog days of summer, we stayed away from the pond because of the smell. But the rest of the year we often wandered around the edge of the pond. The pictures today were more of a seeing the Turtles, and pictures of the kids playing on the play yard. The play-yard was at a church; it was not in our back yard. Ours was a much smaller play-yard. All in our backyard in Indiana. Funny how you remember things about houses you live in. For me, in Indiana, it was our back yard.
