by Sandy Winn

Created on: June 14, 2008   Last Updated: June 16, 2008

When thinking about the humorous and memorable events that have taken place in our pool over the past ten years, I can think of many that brought laughter and smiles at the expense of a family member, friend, or myself. However, the one that springs to mind immediately, though humans are slightly involved, is more about - oh, never mind, you'll see...

We live in a North West Florida Panhandle neighborhood where the fortunate few live along a bay and the rest of us live across the street from it. The park up the street is where everyone in our neighborhood can visit and view the bay in all its beauty. Many creatures live there: fish, crabs, hermit crabs, mosquitoes, water moccasins, gators (so I'm told), frogs, and toads. Flying over the water to grab a refreshing drink, socialize, or eat a hearty meal are a variety of pelicans and seagulls and sleek Blue Herons. I love to sit quietly near the bay and watch all of Nature's Creatures in their natural habitat - quite another story when a few try to make your backyard pool a part of it.

My husband and I tend to let the pool "go green" each winter and early spring. When the mosquitoes start laying eggs, we start the process of readying the pool and usually have it up and running by late April to the middle of May. Our system of having it clean within a few days by upping the pH and using a flocculant have never failed - until this year. All the chemicals were in hand and my husband walked over to start the pool only to have water spew out from the filter in all directions; both of us were totally bummed because we could not afford a brand new filter until we receive our rebate check (which we are still waiting for). A few days later, thankfully, we found some pool "fix-it" sites online and were delighted to find that we wouldn't need a new filter after all, just a couple of parts. Hooray!

We called every pool place in town and none of them had the parts we needed. Three different places said that they would have the parts in a "couple of days" - yeah, right! Days went by and the pool was getting greener and greener. We added chlorine in an attempt to kill off the mosquitoes but the algae (being so thick), on top of leaves we couldn't see to get out, made the chlorine useless. After three weeks of being jerked around by all of our pool stores, we decided to order the parts from online.

In the meantime, it was though the toads knew of our pool dilemma. Those little amphibians made their way out of the bay, through

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