Ice fishing, anyone?

Look out our window and you'll see white! Not snow unfortunately, but the frost is pretty thick and tries its best to imitate snow. Fails on the fluffy part but it does crunch nicely underfoot.

Our fish pond has been frozen over for the last week or so and has been trying to tempt us into attempting to ice skating in tiny little circles on its surface but so far the thought of ice-water drenched feet has deterred us. It wasn't until today that I thought to wonder about the fish. Well, I did think about the fish before but that was just to wonder how well they could handle the cold (they should be fine). Today, it hit me that with the pond frozen over there is now no oxygen exchange with the water which sounds like a good way to suffocate a fish. Since Seth already had an axe out for chopping wood, he obligingly chopped at the ice for a few minutes. Turns out, it's about an inch and a half thick so despite the chopping all we got was a nice little silver dollar sized hole that probably froze back over within the hour. After coming back inside and doing a little research, turns out that yes, ice covering pond long term is bad, however chopping the ice is apparently bad as well--something about the shock waves affecting the ears of the fish (that's right, they have ears) and potentially killing them. Soooo, tomorrow I think we'll get a little more inventive in our ice-removal efforts. Anyone want to come play with our pond? :P