A Fool In The Pool

It’s summertime and all you swimming pool owners know that the most important step in caring for a pool is filling it with cement and turning it into a tennis court.

This is a very logical step after you spend most of your summer and life savings each year trying to turn your pool into something more than a large science experiment dedicated to studying how algae grows, evolves, and eventually mutates into the Swamp Thing where it proceeds wanders around the neighborhood snacking on small dogs and scaring children.

Owning a pool is not like owning a bathtub because pool water has chemicals in it which must be regulated and watched slightly more often than a nuclear reactor. You have to keep track of pH levels, alkalinity levels, free chlorine levels, regular chlorine levels, algae levels, pee-levels, old Band-Aid levels and unidentifiable-objects-at-the-bottom-of-the-deep-end levels, all of which need to be constantly controlled by adding chemicals.

Want more pH? Add expensive chemicals.

Less pH? Add expensive chemicals.

Exactly the same pH? Add really expensive chemicals and never let anyone get within 100 feet of the water.

That’s because the more people use your pool, the more murky and cloudy and green your pool water is going to become. Ideally you should add chemicals to the point where your water is crystal clear and then cover your pool with an airtight Plexiglas cover and make everyone sits on the side of the pool and just talks about how refreshing and cool it would be to touch.

But if you choose to add chemicals to the point where your pool water is clean and clear and you choose not to cover your pool for some reason then you’ll definitely need to worry about the dead squirrels.

The pool-salesmen never mention the dead squirrels, of course. If you ask them they’ll say, “Dead squirrels? I’ve never heard of such a problem! Hahahaha!… Leave before I call security.”

You see: squirrels, being the cute, cuddly, curious creatures that they are, have brains slightly less evolved than the nuts they eat. Squirrels are constantly thirsty due to all those salted roasted peanuts and must drink water from time to time and usually reason, “Why settle for a little puddle in the middle of a busy street where twelve of my cousins were flattened by trucks last summer when I can drink of out a nice big totally truck-free swimming pool??”

So the squirrel dips his head in the pool, ignoring the fact that the water suspiciously smells like a Chlorox factory. A moment later the squirrel falls in the pool and thinks, “Wow, now I can drink a LOT!” and proceeds to prove it by drowning. Sure, squirrels are acrobats in the air, but they’re cows in the water.

You, the unknowing pool owner, find this out the next day when you dive into the pool surface right in front of a bloated, floating balloon of rotting flesh and fur with four legs bobbing in the shallow end. You say, and I quote, “AAAAAAIIIEEEEEEEEEEE!”

And then you proceed to vomit.

Which brings me to the last part of maintaining a pool: the filter. A filtration system is essential on any pool because it cleans the water of any small foreign objects which can usually be found in pool water such as clumps of hair, leaves from nearby trees, bits of fingers and approximately 30 billion dead bugs a day.

Unfortunately, most larger foreign objects such as pool tools, squids, dead squirrels (see above) and unwanted houseguests will clog up the filtration system and you’ll have to clean it out on a regular basis. It is usually best to clean the filter about once a week or when the water begins to solidify into a primordial ooze which gives birth to new and interesting lifeforms, whichever comes first.

Maybe one day you too will own a pool and you’ll be able to say, “Hey, Honey, I’m cleaning out the filter in the pool! I found your wedding gown, that extra set of silverware, my golf clubs and that whole Jimmy Hoffa thing isn’t a mystery anymore! Oh, and what’s this? AAAAAAIIIEEEEEEEEEEE!”