It was like extracting a huge green rotten molar from the mouth of the allotment. It was full of fetid water and slime. There were many flints in it, which I shovelled out with the handy broken up concrete encrusted old Irishman's shovel. It is particularly good at heavy work, because it has weight behind it.
As the water got shallower, I uncovered strange prehistoric looking creatures. They had the bodies of immature froglets, but had six legs. They crawled out before I could photograph them. I think they may have been just waterboatmen, but out of the water, crawling instead of swimming, they looked entirely different. They certainly fitted with the character of the pond, crawling out of the stinking slime like some lost ancient form of creature.
I realised too late why the flints were there. One morning there was a poor dead vole lying in the murky water. It had no means of escape, as the plastic sides would have been too slippery to climb. I covered the pond with its hideous green staring lid, and weighted it down with a couple of bricks.
Yesterday though I was once more greeted by the luminous glaring eyes, and knew that the time had come. I had to get rid of that pond, before it came alive on Halloween and cursed my garlic.
I attacked it with my Irishman's shovel, biting round the mud until I exposed the plastic rim. then I levered it up all round, until I felt it give up with a foul mouthed sigh. It was a good feeling to feel it come away from the earth, and feel the air running into the gap between earth and plastic.
So it won't be perilous to voles or any other creature now. It is resting on my ever growing pile of junk in the middle of the allotment. The pile is looking more like a Tate Modern exhibit every day.
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