No, it's not a pond!

But try telling that to the Canada geese who took up residence on our pool this spring. We had some trouble with the pump that keeps water off the pool cover during the winter—the trouble was it quit working and we never replaced it. So disgusting brown, pond-like water filled the pool. When we took the cover off, I couldn’t blame the geese, it looked like a pond to me too.

A pair of geese has rested on our neighbor’s pond (a real one, not a pool) for years. But this year with the drought in Georgia, I guess their pond didn’t look as inviting. The couple didn’t bypass it completely, but they seemed to look on our pool as their vacation pond. They’d mostly hang out next door, then when they needed a break from the old home place, they’d head to our pool.

Or it could have been the vicious Pomeranian, Princess Prissy Pants, who lives at our house that kept the geese at bay. She enjoyed barking at them, but actually never got too close. Though they should have been used to attacks by small dogs—our neighbors have two Chihuahuas, which by weight almost equal our Pom.

But fun with wildlife in the pool didn’t end with the geese. On day two after uncovering the pool, action-hero Chris (my husband) rescued a pitiful drowning chipmunk from the murky water. He fished him out with the net, dried him (or her, how do you tell with a chipmunk?) off with a towel, then when the little thing still didn’t seem to be recovering fast enough to suit the man of steel, Chris got the hair dryer and gave the critter a blow dry, a haircut would have been extra. The chipmunk recovered and scampered off to the soothing tones of YAP! YAP! YAP! from the resident yap dog.

A drowned rat (literally, nothing figurative about the way it looked) was next. But since that doesn’t have a happy ending, I won’t go into detail.

We’re planning the first human swimmers this weekend, provided the chemicals have finished doing their job on the goose poop, chipmunk fur and general dead-rat ookiness.