Our Pool Is Its Own Ecosystem

So as many of you know, at least those of you who are faithful readers of this blog, our pool is still not complete as our pool guy took off with our money. We have been trying to save up enough money to complete the project since that time.

In the meantime, there have been rain storms...lot of rain storms. Since we have a big hole in our backyard, the rain collects in the pool and just sits there. A few weekends ago Heather and Danny brought their dogs Aspen and Gracie over for a playdate with Hunter and Flash. It was then that we noticed how TERRIBLE the pool had become since the recent rains.

Let's just say it was green and had species of things swimming in there that Dave and I had never seen before. One such new creature kind of had the head of a fish, the tail of a sting ray, and moved like an amoeba with these really weird things on its side. We also discovered that we had mosquitoes (no big surprise), and two types of frogs (bullfrog and tree frog). Yep we have frogs. We are not sure where they are coming from or how they are getting there, but we have been noticing more and more frogs. Frankly, it's sad as they must jump in the pool and then can't get back out so we have these crispy frog bodies on the bottom of our pool (anyone want to come for a swim now?) :)

bull frog
tree frog

Since we happen to be lovers of frogs and such, Dave and I decided it was about time to clean it up. After all there was more rain in the forecast so it would just get worse. We went to Home Depot and bought a pump, chlorine and the like to start our detox of the pool. First. we (and when I mean we, I mean Dave) cleaned out the tumbleweeds from inside the pool. Next we rescued the frogs, and unfortunately Dave decided to rescue this HUGE spider. We decided that we would relocate the frogs to a nearby swamp area as we were going to dump loads of chlorine in the pool to kill the rest of the ecosystem that had sprung up.

tumbleweeds and Caiden

Caiden thought it was loads of fun. We collected the frogs and then drove them to the local swamp where we had just enough time to release them before the rain came pouring down on us. We figured they would have a better chance of survival there than in the chlorinated pool.


Thankfully, the pool is back to normal now...well at least until the next rainstorm hits.