October 21, 2003

Only four days after we scheduled them, the pool guys finally closed the pool. I hope they removed the leaves in the process, but somehow I doubt it. And so yet another pool season draws to a close.

October 15, 2003

We are having quite a blustery day today, so I took a few minutes to scoop leaves out of the now drained pool. (The water level has been lowered by about a foot in preparation for the closing Friday.) Well what do you know - I saw a dead mouse on the gunite in the shallow end of the pool. I thought for sure that the frogs the other day would be the last dead of the season, but I was wrong as I so often am.

Those who like the up-close-and-personal pictures can enjoy the photo to the left, while those who would rather look at pretty scenery will prefer the right-hand photo. Yes, the leaves are turning here, but if you look closely in the foreground, on the skimmer net, you can see my little friend just before I sent him into the woods with a deft flick of the pole.

October 13, 2003

I've started preparing the pool to be closed. The closing will occur on Friday, October 17th, or thereabouts. Today I scooped out a bunch of leaves, a reddish (!) frog, and a neato salamander (which is pictured on the right above.) I haven't taken a "quarter" picture in quite a while, so enjoy!

Then I got the dead frogs out. The first one had stiffened into a very lifelike pose. I fished him out of the northern skimmer with a cost hanger and photographed him just sitting there on the concrete of the deck. I had him aimed toward the pool - it looked like he'd jump in at any second, but he never did. He's on the left above.

I wasn't sure whether the last frog was alive or dead either, until my nose made it abundantly clear that not only was he dead, but he'd been dead for quite some time. He was sort of hidden under a bunch of leaves in the southern skimmer. I tossed him in the woods as usual, along with his well-preserved brethren. It's quite likely these will be the last fatalities of the year, but there are still three more days, so who can say?

October 5, 2003

Ok, given that we haven't put any chlorine in the pool for about a month, it is now extremely pond-like. Thus, it was no surprise to find that (presumably) same large frog in the pool again, hanging out in the northern skimmer well. I really didn't want him to get sucked into the filter, so I managed to irritate him enough by poking him with a coat hanger to get him to swim out into the pool. I then eventually got him onto the pool net and gave him a nice catapult ride into the woods. He hit a lot of tree branches on the way to the ground, so I'm sure he's OK.

Then I checked the southern skimmer and found the dragonfly and mouse pair you see pictured to the left above. It's not much, but it is the first fatality in about a month, so I'll take it. I then tried to brush up a lot of the accumulated algae, but after a while, I couldn't even see the bottom because the water was so green with the stuff. I'll let the filter do its job, and maybe if the weather is good I'll do some more brushing at lunchtime during the week. (But only because I love taking care of the pool so much.)

September 29, 2003

No new fatalities to report, but I did rescue a few frogs from the pool today, and I thought that was noteworthy. The algae have been having a pretty good time of it lately. The frogs are loving the chlorine-free water, as well. The big ol' bullfrog that I managed to snare stirred up a lot of the muck. I think if you look at the picture carefully, you might be able to discern a pattern.

September 7, 2003

I admit that I've been very lax this year about getting out to the pool. Today was a very nice day, however, and I remembered to grab my camera before heading outside, because I knew, deep down in my heart of hearts, that this day was going to be a killfest. And I was not disappointed.

I found the first three (or is it four?) frogs in the northern skimmer. Maybe a crime scene analyst could make out just exactly how many frogs were actually in the basket, but I'm counting it as three, and simply ignoring what appears to be an extraneous leg between the leftmost two frogs. If you want to stare at frog corpses long enough to contradict me, please be my guest.

When I went to the southern basket after dumping the other in the woods, I found two frogs floating, spinning slowly in the current in the way that only dead frogs can spin in the current. Anyway, I scooped them up and made them smile pretty for the camera. And, as usual, I made sure to breathe only through my mouth as I unceremoniously dumped them over the fence into the no-man's land between my house and the neighbors'.

Hmmm, now that I think about it, it probably is the neighbors' land. Oh well - free fertilizer for them!

August 24, 2003

Today I got to scoop this oddly two-dimensional remnant of a frog out of the southern skimmer before backflushing the pool filter. That's it. The water in the pool has been fairly high because of all the rain lately, so the frogs have been jumping in and out of the pool with impunity. Guess this one just couldn't make it. Darwin would be proud.

August 19, 2003

Ah, the dog days of August. Or, in my case, the frog days of August. I've been more quite lazy about checking the pool lately, but a little birdy finally reminded me to tend the unpleasant task of tallying me bananas. And there was quite a crop awaiting me - who knows how many more poor critters disintegrated in the long stretch between cleanings?

The frogs were evenly distributed between skimmers and the surface of the pool. The mouse, or rather, what little was left of the mouse, was in the southern skimmer. Hey, if you want to see what a mouse spine looks like, I'd advise you to examine the mouse picture closely. Contrariwise, if you have no desire to see mice spines, then avoid that picture at all costs.

July 25, 2003

Today found three creatures bobbing in the skimmers. I'll be the first to admit - I haven't been keeping up on my pool hygiene lately. So it happens that the mouse was kind of ripe. As in bloated and mostly hairless. So, I suggest the squeamish stay away from that picture. But on a different note, the pool is quite clear and pretty warm. Who knows, I might actually get in it one of these days.

July 13, 2003

A veritable smorgasbord of cadaverous critters in the northern skimmer awaited my arrival this afternoon. I found two mice, five frogs of varying sizes, and a snail. I believe this is the first snail I've ever seen in the wild. It was bobbing in the water above the skimmer. At first I thought it was the bloated stomach from one of the mice, which was kind of gross. But I poked it with a stick and it was hard, so I dredged it up the side of the skimmer with that trusty stick, and photographed it in all of its glory.

July 4, 2003

This mouse perhaps got a little carried away with his Independence Day celebrations and ended up at the bottom of the deep end of the pool. Actually, he was down there the day before, but I didn't have my camera handy and I figured he'd keep for another day. He certainly wasn't going anywhere.

June 29, 2003

I found this odd little frog, the first of the season, in the southern skimmer. He was all stretched out like that, which was a somewhat disconcerting. Also, he was kind of on the yellow side of green. And I know he wasn't more than two days old, so you can't blame the chlorine. Not that there was all that much chlorine in the water, anyway. Also, I have no idea where that "10" came from. You just find the strangest things in the skimmers sometimes.

June 27, 2003

I found this little mouse in the northern skimmer just before I was took a few shots of some of the garden plantings. Naturally, I have priorities, which is why the picture of the dead mouse ends up on this web site rather than the somewhat more pleasant pictures of flowers. Oh well.

June 23, 2003

Another day, another mouse. We spotted this one smack dab in the middle of the pool yesterday, but by the time I had gotten around to getting my camera, the rain was coming down pretty hard, so I left it until today. I really should start paying more attention to the mice - there seem to be more than one variety dying in the pool. Some are dark gray and fat, while others are skinny and mixed colors, like today's. Maybe someday someone knowledgable in such things will review all of my images, and I can update my counts accordingly.

June 20, 2003

The rain always seems to bring the little critters out for a final swim. Here a chipmunk and a mouse ended up in the southern skimmer together. Have you noticed that I've stopped trying to take individual pictures of every animal? Who really needs to be poking at a bunch of dead things with a stick just to generate separate pictures that gross people out anyway? Not me, that's for sure. Soon after this picture was taken, Chippy and Fievel got first class tickets on the Skimmer Express - destination: the woods.

Coincidentally, Allison and I saw a live chipmunk and mouse today as well. It wouldn't be so remarkable except that where we saw them was scampering up and down the aisles of Home Depot. (The critters were scampering, not us.) Home Depot - the store with its own ecosystem.

June 19, 2003

It's been too long.

The sight of a sinker, a big mouse. The net, the scoop. The obligatory photo session. Then, at long last, a mighty heave of the catapult to send the corpse a-tumblin' into the woods, food for bugs and birds. The first catapult of the season - but surely not the last.

June 17, 2003

OK, let me be the first to say it: This picture stinks. It's a chipmunk, although you'd be hard pressed to tell from the photo. In my defense, I'd like to state that I rushed the picture because I was getting ready to backwash the pool in an heroic attempt to clear it up for this weekend. Actually, the water is already much clearer after about a hundred dollars worth of chemicals got dumped in yesterday and this morning. None of which made this chipmunk's final minutes any more pleasant, I'll wager.

June 15, 2003

It's been a while since I've checked the skimmers. The pool is pretty cloudy, which is unfortunate given the party this weekend, but I'll get it whipped into shape. Anyway, today's haul was two mice and a chipmunk, retrieved from the skimmer baskets. The pool robot was empty - it hasn't been moving around much lately. One of the mice got hung up on the wire fence when I tried to toss it into the woods. I took some pictures of it hanging from the fence, but they just didn't come out well enough to meet this site's high standards. (In other words, they were out of focus and looking up the mouse's butt besides.)

May 31, 2003

After a shaky start, the pool guys finally finished opening the pool on the day after they first arrived. I didn't get around to looking for critters until this morning, but boy, we started this year off with a bang! The mouse I scooped out of the shallow end essentially exploded after his long submersion. Warning: this picture is especially gross. I was so happy!

Then, as I emptied out the pool robot (it filled with leaves about a minute after it rolled through the deep end), I was rewarded with this little chipmunk. The lesson? Don't count your chipmunks until you've emptied the skimmers. All of the skimmers.

May 28, 2003

The pool is open. Let the counting begin!

May 5, 2003

I have finally gotten around to scheduling the pool opening this year. The pools opens May 28th, in theory. Judging from past experience, that is usually a day or two earlier than the actual date that I can expect it to be open. It seems pretty expensive - I may have to look into alternate services.

February 12, 2003

I dreamt that when the pool opened after the winter, there were five possums in it. How they could have gotten under the cover was unclear. Back in Realityland, there is at least a foot of snow, possibly up to two, covering the pool right now. Let's hope my dream wasn't an omen. Fishing even one possum out of the pool wasn't all that pleasant.