Ever just give up? Yep! I did last summer. We had two smallish ponds connected by a short stream with Koi and Goldfish in one and Guppies and Bettas in the other. Water lilies, cattails and other planty things abounded in and around the ponds. I cannot count how many times the ponds needed to be emptied, the plants rinsed off, repotted and otherwise resuscitated after our dog Daisy would finish her rescue attempts of those poor drowning plants and baskets. Many plants were shredded beyond hope. Water lilies really should not sun themselves on the lawn but Daisy did not understand this concept. The final straw was after a raccoon tipped everything over while fishing for the fish. There were only about 6 guppies left from all the fish. I did not only cry. I sobbed! I took out the surviving fish, emptied the pools of death and filled the site with soil and planted some lovely sun loving perennials and a flowering crabtree. We still have the little 3000 gal. wildlife pond that has always had frogs, toads and salamanders in and around the area. I gave up on the fishy pond. I gave up 113% ! My DH has not given up since over the winter magically there appeared 4 beautiful koi and 3 or 4 goldfish in a stocktank in the basement along with a filter, plants.... Hmmmmmmm. I am afraid to put these guys outside. Something will make a meal out of them or Daisy will try to make friends with them or rescue them from drowning like she did the plants. Mike can be in charge of what ever he has planned. I'm never going in the backyard. Simple solution! LOL! :-) C3D ... Still gave up!

Texas_Annie: When I lived in Southern California, half of my time gardening was spent dealing with gophers. People in the East have no idea what these little buggers can do! Once, a neighbor and I were growing giant pumpkins for a contest, and as they grew larger and larger, we would try and lift them off the ground a bit, to guess their weight. Ours were each about 150 pounds, or so, until one day when he lifted his pumpkin, it came right up off the ground. Gophers had tunneled in from beneath it, and eaten all its insides out--nothing but a shell remained. This, after 3 months of special care given the pumpkin. I'm sure he would have liked to wring the little critter's neck. They do make traps for gophers that are pretty effective. You open their run (when you see soil piled up) and put the trap in the run, then put a board over it. Lifting the board and checking it periodically should yield a squashed little plant-eater. If you continue doing this for the rest of your life, you'll probably keep the gophers under control.

punamytsike, I will see if it comes back to life in a few days. Fortunately, the Pokeman game he had worked very hard on did turn out to be ok, so he didn't lose all of his saved work! catslikemice, We had the next one up from the Advance - - what was it called? It folded like a laptop and had a rechargeable battery. Also had the Advance, I'm ashamed to say. Really, he doesn't play it that much. He's not one of those kids who is perpetually hooked up! But it's great for traveling or bad-weather days, and I limit the time. He could only afford two games, so he bought a racing game and a Nintendogs game. On Nintendogs, he got a Pug and named it the same thing as our real-life Pug. So now he sits around, calling his virtual Pug by name and giving her commands, driving the IRL Pug insane because she thinks he's talking to her. She sits when he says sit, and doesn't get the biscuit she thinks she deserves, and it drives her nuts! Then the virtual Pug barks, and the IRL Pug goes crazy, running around the house barking back. Pretty funny. I told him if he spent half the time training the IRL Pug that he does the virtual Pug, we would have the best behaved pet on the block. ;-) What are the wi-fi enabled games? And, since I don't really understand wi-fi, do you have to live near a place that is hooked up, so to speak? 'Cause I don't think we do.

When I was 20, my roommate and I went on a vacation to the Cayman Islands. One day, a trio of 3 men beside us on the hotel's patio (they looked to be mid 40's) started chatting with us. The said they were childhood friends, and always went on a vacation together every few years, to go deep sea fishing. They said their wives went together the same week, to some other vacation destination. They had rented a boat for the next day, and hoped to catch some 'big fish.' They said if we felt like getting offshore for half the day, we could meet them on the beach the next morning and join them. They explained that it could get pretty boring waiting for a bite, and being childhood friends who'd shared every story possible, they'd welcome some different conversation...but one laughed and added that we should feel free to bring something to read, in case we found them too boring. We asked how their wives would feel about their invitation. All 3 said their wives wouldn't be upset, as they knew their husbands frequently invited a few people to join them, and that they implicitly trusted their wives as well. So we agreed to meet them on the beach the next morning, with our packed lunches and nothing else. Just before we boarded the boat, one of them mentioned that the ride out to where they needed to go, could be pretty choppy. He offered us some Gravol, to avoid getting seasick, which we took. The pills looked 'normal' and it was back in '76, so we'd never heard of date rape drugs back then. Indeed the ocean was pretty choppy on the long ride out to sea. About an hour after they stopped, I started feeling really sleepy. My roommate later told me she'd been captivated, watching one of the men struggle to reel in a large fish for about 20 minutes. When he finally landed it, she noticed I was nowhere to be seen. She was told that I'd almost nodded off in my seat, so had gone below deck to lie down for a while. My roommate said she went down, but I was asleep, so she went back up top. Less than an hour later I awakened and rejoined everyone. Nothing was amiss, and I felt refreshed after my nap. Not long after, I watched a shark being caught and released, as it was deemed to be too young. When we returned to shore, the men were thrilled that one of them had landed a big fish that would be mounted and brought home. The next afternoon, we saw the men come back in, with 2 guys and a girl they'd apparently invited along, but no big fish. So my roommate and I were thrilled we'd been part of a successful deep sea fishing excursion! But as a mature adult in today's world, I realize how bad things could have gone. In our naivety, we'd gone with 3 virtually strange men, out to sea. No one at the hotel would have known what happened if we'd disappeared, and certainly not our families back home. There weren't even any witnesses on the beach at 5 am, or on the hotel patio when we'd left with them. Although the Gravol just made me sleepy, it could easily have been a totally different pill. Even if the men really were 'happily married to implicitly trusting wives' we still could have been killed and just dumped overboard, way out at sea. No one knew we were on board and sharks would have eaten the evidence. So my roommate and I were very, very fortunate that these truly were a trio of honorable men, who were at all times courteous and respectful to us. That still stands as the most foolish and potentially dangerous thing I ever did.