There must be a fox expert among us.
If you are one, here's a question I need to know the answer to:
Could a fox, or perhaps more than 1 fox, drink 150 litres of water over 4 nights??
Because I've got a 250 litre fresh pond, lovely clean water in it, no fish or any reptile living in it, it is sitting waiting in preparation for fish, and over the past 4 days it has gone from 250 litres of water full to the brim, to just under 100 litres of water left today. Every morning over the past 4 days it has dropped significantly in volume.
It's in a quiet, shady corner in the garden, under a tree, out of sight from the house, and our garden is pitch black at night (rural village with no street lighting).
There is no way that volume of water has evaporated in 4 days. There is no direct sun on it ever, and the loss of vume has happened over night each night, not during the day. We've been monitoring the water loss carefully. So it simply has not evaporated 150 litres in 4 days.
Today we removed the pond (pre formed pond), cleaned it out, stood it on the patio, filled it up with water and watched to see if there's a leak......no leak. 10 hours later it's still sitting on the patio as full as a bath. No decrease in volume whatsoever.
So how the hell have we lost 150 litres of water over 4 nights?!
Can foxes drink that much???
I'm in the SE and we are having very hot, dry weather.
And if it's not foxes, what on earth is happening? It's quite badly freaking me out.