Pool saga

I knew when we decided to put a pool in the backyard that it would be a source of great pleasure for our family. I envisioned the family playing monster (this is really fun), lounging on hot afternoons, and jumping in periodically, while in the middle of yard work, to keep cool.

I did not anticipate the continued parade of animals. Apparently the season for frogs and snakes has passed and the turtle season is now upon us. Turtles? Last week there was a teeny-tiny turtle in the pool. He was so small that I thought he was a leaf. I pointed to the object in question, and asked Pat for his thoughts. Unfortunately, Pat has been asked a few too many times about objects in the pool. All I got was an eye roll worthy of a female drama queen, and an assurance that it was indeed only a leaf. Well, it did turn out to be a turtle after all. We found his sad little dead body in the skimmer basket as proof. So ha.


This morning I was standing at the window gazing absently into the back yard and lo and behold there was a reasonably sized turtle swimming around in the pool. Notice how comfortable he looks in the midst of those lovely Fall leaves.



Luckily I am not afraid of turtles, so I grabbed the camera and ran down to catch him before he could get sucked into the skimmer basket. Please pause for a moment in recognition of my skills. It is hard to pick the turtle up and rotate your wrist at that angle so you can get a good photo.

He's kinda cute. I was trying to convince Rachel to get rid of her useless fur-ball of a rabbit and adopt this little dude instead, but it wasn't happening.

Since we've already taken a moment to be thankful for my wrist flexibility, now take a moment to admire the bedhead. We had all just gotten up when the amazing turtle discovery was made. Everyone had a shot at manhandling the poor turtle before he was returned to the stream that runs through the backyard.

So remember those lovely leaves that I mentioned? Well they are falling into the pool like mad.

Good thing the pool boy (aka my hubby) is on hand to clean that stuff up.

If I don't post for a few days you'll know Pat cancelled the DSL in order to rein in his sassy wife.

Little do the poor, unsuspecting kids know -- plans are underway to teach them how to scoop leaves. The leaves are going to be bad. We probably should have chopped down more trees. But we were trying to be good stewards of the environment. No good deed goes unpunished, right?

Originally, we tossed around the idea of covering the pool during leaf season. I was talking with another pool owner yesterday who strongly discouraged this idea. She mentioned that the deer have been known to jump the fences during the Fall mating season. She stated that they would try to run across the cover, and then get stuck in the pool. Now that would be worth a picture. And definitely a blog. Normally, I would think that stampeding deer sounds kinda ridiculous, but at the rate we're going a stray bear doing the backstroke wouldn't completely shock me.