Death of Moby

Here are photos of the watersnake that devoured most of my fish. We don't know how long he was in our pond, but judging from his size and the loss of fish I noticed each day, I surmise he had been in the pond area only three or four days. Last night at dinner, I spotted him entering the pond again and Brett sprung into action. He ran outside and grabbed the lily pad trimmer, a long aluminum pole with a blade mechanism on the end for cutting or grabbing lily pads and spent blossoms. With amazing stealth and agility, Brett managed to put the blade around the snakes' neck and grab and pull it out of the pond. I stood by with the garden shovel and together we chopped off the snakes' head. All our pets excitedly watched. They all knew the snake was around for days and I would see them sniffing the area excitedly each day when I would let them out of the house. As you can see from the photos, the snake is about 3 patio blocks long, stretched out. Each block is 12 inches long, so my snake was 36 inches long and he was almost as thick as my forearm. Fortunately he was not a poisonous snake. The sad news is, when Brett held him up to throw into the woods, there were two large, fish shaped lumps in its' tummy. One of those lumps was Moby, Brett's favorite fish.
Moby has been in our pond for 10 years and had reached a length of 8 inches. Moby was the very first baby born in our pond from our originally purchased goldfish and Moby was solid black. We lovingly called him our "Stealth Fish" because you could not see him easily in the pond.

Mental Note: Paint a memorial painting of Moby.