A crabby start to the day

I went out to check the swimming pool chemicals this morning, vaguely thinking of having a quick swim before work, and there sitting in the bottom of the pool was a crab. I must admit, he looked quite happy sitting there, but I was worried about him soaking in all those chemicals, and not having a ready supply of crab food so I fished him out. He was about 4" across, so a pretty big guy, and was remarkably calm about being caught in my leaf net. But there's nothing that puts me off getting in the pool quite like sharing it with other non-human creatures, so I didn't get in. Since I've lived in my current house (a little over two years), there've been three live animals in it and one and half dead ones. And while of course the dead ones are waaay worse for putting me off swimming, it's still kind of freaky. So, excluding bugs, my tally now is: one live crab, one live snake, one live cat (mine - she fell in when she jumped in a startled manner after I accidentally splashed her on a slightly drunken evening hot tub session, and apparently she'd forgotten that she was standing on the wall between the hot tub and the pool so that jumping backwards away from the splash did not lead to safety but a precipitous drop into the water. I managed to get her to swim to the steps and helped her out, and then we spent the rest of the evening with me chasing her around the house with various towels and my hair dryer while she looked very bedraggled and sorry for herself. Ahem, not my finest hour as a pet parent, but she did look pretty funny when wet), one dead baby rat and half a dead squirrel. And yes, I did dispose of the dead creatures by lobbing them over the fence into the neighbor's yard. What? Isn't that the formally recognized method of dead animal disposal?

Mmmmmm - I bet you all want to come swimming now! See how fun it is living in Florida?