I spent a good part of yesterday afternoon cleaning up the leavings of Isabel from my yard and pool. In particular, she dumped great piles of leaves in the pool, so I was standing at poolside patiently vaccuuming the bottom for a long time.
For those who aren’t pool owners, it goes like this: you attach a thirty-foot blue hose (looks like vaccum cleaner hose) to the suction of your pump, hook the other end of the hose to a vaccuum head attached to a long pole, and you use the pole to guide the head over to where the leaves are. In theory, the leaves go up the hose and into the filter basket on the inlet of your pump. In my case, there were so many leaves that they would clog the entrance to the hose every few minutes; periodically, I had to pull the whole thing out, reach in, and extract the wad of leaves.
On one of these pauses to unclog the vaccuum head, I (thankfully) glanced briefly at what I was about to yank out and saw a dead chipmunk stuck butt-first in the hose, staring back at me. Gack! I disconnected the hose and was able to get him out without actually having to use my hands.
Unfortunately, this is not uncommon: soon after opening the pool this year I found three chipmunks and a big honkin’ rabbit bobbing around in the deep end.
I figure that my experience must be fairly mundane as far as pool ownership goes: after all, I live in the 'burbs in New Jersey, not exactly the center of exotic wildlife.
I shudder at the thought of what kinds of creatures or other things might be found in pools in more remote areas.
So, I ask you: What kind of icky things have you found in your swimming pool?
Oh, and an additional question: What do you do when them when you find them?
We had an above ground oval pool when I was growing up. It was huge, like 36 x 15. and every winter we would infalte this huge bubble to put under the pool cover so water could not collect on top and freeze and cause all kinds of problems.
One year the neighbors 100 pound balck standard poodle went missing, and we could not find the poor thing for a few days. We walked around back of the pool one day in February and saw two legs sticking out of the frozen water ontop of the pool. Upon closer inspection we saw what had happened, the dogs front paws went through the vinyl lining whilst chasing a squirrel. Both froz directly to the pool. So there was a frozen dead poodle and a frozen dead squirrel sticking out of our pool one year. Is that weird enough?
My co-worker was just telling me this afternoon about finding a skunk doing laps in her pool. The poor thing must have tried to get a drink, fell in, and was unable to pull himself out.
She used the pool-skimmer net to fish him out and set him on the ground. He was so exhausted that he just lay there for a while, but finally ambled off into the bushes.
In addition to the usual bugs and such, I’ve found a leopard gecko, a kangeroo rat, a mourning dove, and a 4 inch centipede. (I suppose the neighbor’s kids don’t count…they are acually cute)
When I was a lifeguard many years ago, one of the things that I did was clean out the sump at the public pool. It was common to find bathing caps and …uuhh…bosom enhancers. I often wondered what the poor person thought when they found that they had lost one…or two?
Don’t tell the folks at Disney, but Mickey bought it in 1996. He was floating under the solar cover that Christmas. My brother happened to be visiting and handled the disposal. Usually, I just vacuum out leaves.
At University a bunch of us students lived in motels leased by the University because there weren’t enough dorms at the time. One weekend we found a dead deer in the pool. It was obviously a road-kill and some dumb-ass decided it would be funny to chuck it in the pool.
My grandparents live about 7 miles from Natural Bridge in the Blue Ridge mountains, on 160 acres of mostly woodlands. Their closest neighbor keeps livestock. They have fences, gates, and cattle guards up where their properties connect.
In 1973 or -4, they built an inground pool.
The next year, they found one of their neighbor’s mules floating dead in the pool.
Mules, skunks, geckos… I’m jealous. I never get cool stuff in my pool like that!
I get the usual collection of bugs (all kinds of insects), centipeded and other similar crawly things, frogs, lots and lots of frogs and just this weekend, a tennis ball in the skimmer. I have no idea where it came from either.
I just put the pool in this year, so I guess I have some catching up to do with wierd pool critters etc.
