The pet we didn't know we had (and no longer have)

As most of you will know, our property in Cremorne consists of around 7 hectares of pasture and about 15 hectares of Rushy Lagoon. When we arrived at the end of October and moved to our block in November, we had quite a bit of rain, and the lagoon filled up with a bit of water. There were black swans swimming around for a few weeks, until the water evaporated and the lagoon again went back to a relatively dry state.

In our part of the lagoon, someone once dug a reasonably bit hole. We are not sure if they did this in order to try to establish a dam, but the hole is there and there has always been water in it, basically proving that there is water below the surface of the lagoon. We have not really thought much about this hole, except for having tasted the water a couple of times and concluded that it is brackish and therefor not very useful for irrigation.

The last couple of months have been very dry, and the soil has started cracking up in places on our property. In respect of building, we do not mind that the rain stays away, but any other time, we would have been hoping for lots more rain. But they again, the summer is the dry time here, and Cremorne is one of the dryer places in Tasmania, so things are more or less normal. With the dry conditions, the hole has been drying out, and the current conditions is like this:

Normally, the water would be up to the edges of this picture.

Now, again for people with good eyes, it should be possible to discover the reason for the heading for this diary entry. When we walked over to our neighbours we had a quick look in the hole (or pond if you like - sounds a bit better), and there in the water we find a dead eal. Belive it or not, but it is actually true (see picture below). The really big questions, of course, are how did the eal get there, and how long has it actually lived in the pond ? It measured almost a meter long, so we are guessing it has to be a few years old. It must have had a really sad life living in the pond on its own, but now it has ended. Eals, of course, can travel over land for short distances, and can live both in salt and fresh water, but we are still  uncertain how this eal got into a lagoon which are closed off from the sea. If anyone has any good suggestions on how this has happened, please let us know.

For now, here is the sad result of what must have been a sad life:

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