July 30, 2000
or, Will nothing die?!?
It's been eleven days since something worth counting died in the pool, and hey, I'm getting bored. I am so bored that I rearranged the
pictures above in reverse chronological order, just like these descriptions. It seemed like the logical thing to do. And yes, I
know the page is getting too long - I'm going to break it into subpages the next time I get sufficiently (dare I say it a third time?) bored. In the meantime, I'll
keep checking the skimmers and even the robot in the hopes of finding some new material. It keeps me going when nothing else will.
July 22, 2000
I found this giant beetle thing bobbing in the northern skimmer. Actually, it had been there quite a while, but I wasn't sure
how I was going to represent it on this page, so I left it in there. It didn't seem to decompose much during the wait. Anyway, I'm
glad I found this thing dead instead of dive bombing me in the pool. I don't count insects, even those of gargantuan size, but
I thought this one was at least worth a look.
July 19, 2000
We got some rain yesterday, and sure enough, I found a mouse in the southern skimmer. The photo is not that great, but I also took a
movie of the mouse spinning in the current, which I will post in the near future.
July 10, 2000
or, When it rains, it pours... frogs
It rained pretty hard yesterday, so I was not surprised to find a lot of animals in the pool. They seem to blunder in more readily when it is raining.
The mouse was just floating near the southern skimmer - I took him out first. Then I scooped up a frog in the shallow end, near the robot. Before launching
him, I looked in the northern skimmer. There were a bunch of tiny frogs in there, most of them alive and sitting on the edge of the skimmer basket, whose edge
had floated up out of the water as it will do when the pump is not on. I scooped all of them up, shooed the live ones off the net, and photographed the
less fortunate. I launched that batch into the woods, and then scooped out one more live frog before retrieving a dead one from the very bottom of the deep end.
By then it was getting dark, so I had to use the flash to take his photo before I introduced him to his new resting place.
July 5, 2000
I came home from work today, checked the skimmers, and in the southern one I found both a mouse and a tiny frog. In fact, I almost missed the frog
entirely. I hoisted the mouse out with my trusty coat hanger (with which I typically snare the basket handle), and catapulted him. Then I pulled a few leaves
out with the hook, and the frog sort of bobbed to the top momentarily. I gave up trying to get him out with the hook, snapped his picture in situ,
and dumped the whole basket into the woods. Such is my life.
July 2, 2000
On the morning of our annual Old Gang Fourth of July pool party, Allison was pleased to discover this amazingly dry mouse floating serenely above
the bench in the deep end of the pool. I think if you look really closely at the picture, you can see that the 'Circle of Life' is already
in progress. Ick. Anyway, as usual, my net and I proceeded to prove once again that for a dead mouse, the shortest distance between the pool and the woods is a parabolic arc.
(although I must say for fellow nerds everywhere that even discounting air resistance, the arc is in fact not parabolic, but instead a very small segment
of an elliptical orbit, one of whose foci is the center of mass of the mouse-Earth system [which of course is practically the same as the center of the Earth]
- and by the way, if you figured out how to read this tiny text, well good for you!)
June 23, 2000
After a long dry spell (well, not literally dry, but dry in the "devoid of dead pool animals" sense), I sent two ex-mice into the woods
today. One was floating near the pool robot outlet, trapped in the coils of the robot's hose. The other was in the northern skimmer, and seemingly
had been there for a day or two, judging from the odor and the patchy appearance of the remaining fur. Today also marks the first day that the pool
was used - it was a somewhat chilly 76°F.
June 8, 2000
or, "I touch dead things"
With all of the rain over the last several days, I was surprised not to encounter a virtual menagerie of floating creatures (which seems to be the trend after a heavy rain.)
However, the water level is now extremely high, which I speculate may be allowing the critters to escape before succumbing to the frigid water. Good for them!
Unfortunately for one mouse, though, that was not the case. I found this victim in the southern skimmer. It was quite obscured by leaves and debris, so I steeled
myself to do something that I would have considered unthinkable a year ago: I reached in, grabbed it by the hind foot, and transferred the mouse to the skimmer cover.
If you look closely at the picture, you can see that one of the hind feet looks very pink. That's where I grabbed it. At first I was afraid that the foot was
going to come off (or at least that the skin would come off the bones), but apparently the mouse was still fresh enough to hold together. I don't think I'm going to make
a habit out of picking up dead stuff barehanded, though. Naturally, I flipped the mouse into the woods after snapping the picture.
May 31, 2000
The water has cleared significantly since yesterday, and I am now able to see the bottom at the deep end easily. That is where I found the second chipmunk of the season.
He seemed sort of fresh, so it might be the case that he stumbled in last night. In any case, I took his mug shots before catapulting him into the
woods, as per tradition. Then I undertook the occasionally gruesome task of emptying the filter bag on the pool robot. Thankfully, it appeared to be
full of only leaves - not that I poked around in the pile, mind you, but there wasn't that smell of long dead rodent that I have come to
know and detest.
May 30, 2000
The pool was opened right on schedule this year. Trembling with anticipation (perhaps I exaggerate slightly), I peered into the murky depths
of the pool, searching through the gathered detritus of the long winter. At the shallow (north) end of the pool, I spotted the chipmunk and a
mouse, nestled together as if asleep. Further inspection revealed yet another mouse, about halfway down the slope toward the deep end. The cloudiness
of the just-opened pool prevented me from discovering any other creatures (other than several small salamanders, bleached white by long immersion, and too
small to count).
I set the pool robot to work, cleaning up the leaves, acorns, seeds, grass cuttings, and other debris that managed to work its way under the
cover in the months since October last. Tomorrow may yield yet more unfortunate creatures in the robot's filter bag.
May 10, 2000
The pool will be opened on the 30th of May. This should allow sufficient time for the trees to stop shedding all kinds of
pollen and seeds and other nasty stuff that I'd just have to scoop out of the pool anyway.