Went out the back door to get the stepladder from the garage. Checked state of pool pump; it was off--the ground fault interrupter had tripped, which it seems to do periodically because of rain or something--so I turned it on, then looked at the pool to verify it was working.
"Say," I said to myself, "that's an awful big clump of leaves over there, is that...OH MY GOD IT'S A SQUIRREL!"
*sigh*
Adult squirrel, in the prime of health before he drowned. Stiff as a board. I don't know what effect submersion has on rigor mortis, but rigor hits its peak about 13 hours postmortem and goes away between 48-60 hours. My examination was not exhaustive, but it was almost entirely immobile but for its tail, so if it was dead more than 36 hours I'd be surprised.
Even so, there's a thin oily layer on the water, and because I don't know what the hell that is, I dumped about 90% of a pack of shock into the pool--having shocked the pool, a couple weeks ago, at the correct dose from that packet--to kill all germs dead, and tomorrow I'm going to drain it. That pack of shock is good for 13,000 gallons and our pool holds 1,000 gallons, so 12,000 gallons' worth of shock ought to sterlize that pool but good.
And yeah, it may be overreacting, but Dad taught me from an early age to be very careful about contact with wild animals, because you simply don't know what kind of diseases or parasites they (or their fleas) may be carrying.
On-line pool guides say that a dead animal in the pool is no cause for alarm, and simply raising the chlorine for a couple hours is more than enough. That may be, but there's no guidance on what you do if the animal has been decomposing in the pool for an unknown about of time; those instructions cover what to do if you find an animal in your pool which wasn't there yesterday.
Since I intended to drain it this past Friday, I haven't even looked at the pool for more than a week. I was simply too busy with other things.
Anyway, I got a shovel and buried the poor creature under the pear tree; and then I skimmed the leaves out of the pool just to make sure the shock mixed well with the water, and also so that when it does come time to drain it there won't be any clogs. As I did that, a neighbor (behind a tall privacy fence) started yelling: "YA! YA, YA! YA!!" I heard a noise and saw a fox jump over the fence, trot between pool and treeline, and then sit on the grass looking at me. Eventually he decided to go find someplace else to sit, and ambled away, but he didn't seem terribly afraid of me.
I'd bet it's the same fox I saw when building the wood crib, and which Mrs. Fungus saw not long ago.
* * *
Anyway: working on the hallway, needed the stepladder to get at the ceiling where I did some spackling, fiddled with the pool, buried a squirrel, saw a fox--I've had enough time to cool off from that so now I'll get back to work.
*sigh*