Dig it and they will come??

Before moving onto the farm somewhere between moving the house out there and putting in the septic system, I decided to put in a small three foot deep "pond". It's really more like a three foot deep 10 foot wide hole in the ground. Anyway the pond was intended for our two turtles, the female, sneaker, was a large red ear slider and the male, stubs, was a small yellow Belly slider. We had found sneaker maybe about 6 years ago after hurricane gustav under my upright dresser in my bedroom. How she had gotten in the house, past us, past the dog, and all the way to the bedroom in the back of the house was beyond any of us and the house never did have any water come into it. So I kept her and decided she needed a friend so we went searching canals and stumbled upon stubs. He was appropriately named because he was missing a back leg, a defect from birth. He and sneaker got along very well although I'm pretty sure stubs had gills because sneaker would always sit on top of him and never seemed to move. 

So I had decided that sneaker and stubs needed to be outdoors in a real pond instead of the large plastic container they were housed in for the past 6 years. So the "pond" was dug specifically for them, unfortunately neither of them ever got to enjoy it. We lost sneaker last June only a week before my wild rabbit, sweet pea, had passed. As far as we could tell sneaker died from a combination of old age and some kind of parasitic worm. 

Stubs held on until about February of this year. Poor little guy tried to stay but he seemed heart broken and lost without sneaker. He was having problems climbing on his rocks and logs and on occasion we'd find him flipped over on his back not breathing and fearing he was dead until we'd flip him right side up and he'd start breathing again, but sadly we eventually lost him too. I think Skylar was more heartbroken than the rest of us, but both turtles had a great life. 

Well since we've been on the farm the pond has been used for watering plants and home to a ton of frogs. This morning I noticed something small and bright white crawling out of the pond. As I was too far away to tell exactly what it was I walked over to the pond to investigate. To my surprise it looked as though we had small fish in the pond, some looking like they were belly up. I walked to the edge of the pond and realized what I was seeing were the tadpoles. Of course at this point they look like some weird small fish with legs. So I picked up a very thin twig and started to play with them lifting them up gently with the stick until they jumped back into the water. As I was watching in sheer child like fascination I just happend to look down and inches away from my bare feet at the edge of the pond I saw this small creature looking up at me. It took me a minute to realize it wasn't one of the tadpoles, but a medium sized crawfish. So I took my twig and put it right in between each of his claws to get him to play. Which to my delight he did. He grabbed onto the small end of the twig with one claw and tried to pull it into the water with him. 

I was so excited, I ran back to the house and jumped onto my bed like an excited child to wake up a very tired and Unenthused Sean. He had just gotten home an hour before from the night shift. 

I was so excited I made him get out of bed and go out to the pond with me so he could see the crawfish. Of course the crawfish never resurfaced and I was only able to show him a very tiny crawfish I happened to spot near the very spot the larger one had been. 

Well, in my defense Sean said he wanted to have his own crawfish pond so we wouldn't have to keep paying high dollar for crawfish. This year the price of crawfish in Louisiana is $4.00 a pound!!! Usually we only pay 2 dollars and some change and even that's kinda pricey for things you can find in just about any ditch  or yard in Louisiana