trouble at the OK corral

A couple months ago I mentioned that my family has a opossum that comes to our house every once in a while to eat cat food that we have sitting in the front if the house. Well, it somehow slipped my mind to share that we also have a raccoon that frequents our yard in search of cat food and small animals to harass like Tater Tot (who he enjoys bullying by standing up on his hind legs and hitting the glass door, as seen in the grainy cell phone picture to the right). Smokey the Bandit (as my dad has since named him) will eat pretty much anything and lately my parents have gotten into the habit of getting "Raccoon Bags" from restaurants rather than "Doggy Bags". Over the past several weeks Smokey has enjoyed a variety of food, including, but not limited to: cake, focaccia bread, pasta with marinara, burritos, banana bread, oreo cupcakes, pork chops, and most recently, my dad's prized koi fish.

Six years ago when we moved into this house my dad bought four koi fish for a pond in the front of the house that he built for my mom. We never gave them names or anything because I'm usually the one who names pets and I didn't really care about the koi fish too much, but they were a pretty big deal to my dad since he bought them when they were barely 6 inches long and watched as they grew to nearly three feet long over the next six years. While I was in Mexico with my mom, my dad called us somewhat upset and told us that Smokey the Bandit had gotten into the pond, eaten half of the largest fish, then left the body on the side of the house. He told us he was going to put some kind of netting over the pond so Smokey couldn't get in, but when we came home from Mexico we found that Smokey had eaten ALL of the koi. As a side note, my dad drove to Cabo San Lucas in his truck to surprise my mom for her birthday, so he was a little pressed for time and clearly didn't make Smokey-proofing the pond a priority.

On Friday of last week my dad took us out to a koi pond supplier in the country and we bought 5 new, baby koi fish. Koi fish are expensive, and for large koi like the ones Smokey consumed you will easily spend several hundred dollars per fish. We opted for the $10 dollar fish. This time I decided they needed names so they felt like true members of the family, so I named them after Disney characters: Cinderella, Peter Pan, Captain Hook, Jack Sparrow, and TJ, the initial's of my mom and dad (my dad's idea). I bet you're wondering, did my dad learn from his mistake in the past and put some kind of protective barrier between the pond and the outside world? No. Not more than three days later all the fish were gone once again. So, my dad insists that he is going to makeover the pond and dig it deeper so Smokey won't be able to get to the fish. At this point, the pond is only about two feet deep, and according to some koi site I found on Google they should be at least six feet deep. How embarrassing is it going to be to have to go back to that koi pond supplier and tell him the raccoon ate our fish again? I guess he probably won't care since every time a raccoon eats someone's fish he makes money by selling them a new one.