I had a heron visit last Memorial Day. You try to think of everything and
do a good job where it counts, water quality, filtration, and so on. This
is something you don't expect or plan for. I have a dog that would have
scared the heron away but I didn't let her out because of mud. I took her
on walks instead. If only I let her out...

But, you did your part. You weren't careless or negligent. Like much in
life, we can't plan for everything.

Fortunately, I live in the suburbs and it was just too busy for the heron to
stay more than a couple of days. You might want to invest in one of the
motion activate sprinklers. Or get a big dog like me

"Judy" wrote in message
om...
My husband and I took a weeks vacation we have not had for three
years. We came home today and to my surprise, my four year old Koi
(four of them) were all missing from our pond. In addition I also had
another pond with veil tail shubukins, they were also gone. We found
on the top of our boat cover a large amount of bird droppings, we feel
a large bird got our fish. We raised these fish from small two inch
Koi. I've read many post from people having there pet fish taken by
large birds. How do you get over this. After raising them this long
and watching them grow and knowing when you go out to visit them they
will greet you and allow you to touch them. What a way to come back
from vacation. I do blame myself as I feel I'm a novice at this and
should of realized that some day a large bird will discover a new food
source. We plan to enlarge the pond and build a netted structure to
avoid this from happening again. We enjoy our fish and won't give up.