Wednesday, June 21, 2006

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?

3 comments:

namaste said...

Shameless lurker checking in. I just need to know - "half a squirrel?" Um, do I even dare to guess which half and what happened to the other parts? Oy.

Solitaire said...

OK, if you really want to know, it was actually less than half of a squirrel - mostly tail and a some stripped off skin and fur. I'm assuming the body was eaten by some of the other delightful wildlife that comes to visit. Or maybe someone else's cat, because it couldn't have been mine as she struggles to catch slow-moving lizards on a good day so would have no chance against a healthy squirrel. Or maybe there was just a crazy old squirrel fight on the electrical wires that stretch across the back of the yard and one of them got fritzed and turned into half a flying squirrel?

Anonymous said...

LOL! We just moved from South FL and I do not miss the wildlife! Oh and lobbing the squirrel over the fence is the FL law! Too funny. LOL!
Ceecee