Texas Mess

Jim, Jacob, and I arrived at our Houston house on Monday night. The second thing that we noticed - after first noting that our front lawn was quite overgrown - was that our swimming pool was a disgusting mess. This was surprising because our automatic "Polaris" vacuum is supposed to alleviate problems of this nature. The filter was clogged with leaves & dirt, there was crud floating on the surface of the water, and a thin layer of scum was coating the pool bottom. Even though it was dark outside, we began to clean the filter, skim, and scrub. After more careful observation this morning, I discovered the biggest culprit in the water was an unfamiliar-to-me weed-type pod that crumbled and turned almost dust-like when touched. There were thousands of these weedy-things in our yard, so I spent an hour sweeping them up before they could dump any more debris into the pool. When Jim spoke to some co-workers today about our dilemma, they said that some recent storms have wreaked havoc with many pools in the area. We "backwashed" our pump, added chlorine, and filtered for hours. With some more scouring and filtering, the pool ought to have its sparkle back soon.

As I was scrubbing a shallow part of the pool this afternoon, I saw what appeared to be animal footprints in the bottom-scum. I thought they looked a lot like raccoon prints, but I doubted that a raccoon would frolic in the swimming pool, or that a raccoon would even live in the neighborhood. It was shortly after this that I discovered the head of a lizard-y type critter on the deck. The head was fairly big, with shriveled up gecko-like claw pieces nearby. If this head had been attached to a body, the varmint would have been well over a foot long. (And, yes, I do wonder where the rest of the body went . . . ) To top the day off, we found a dead bird at the back of our house. And the mosquitoes are out in full force here and are as big around as half dollars. Yes, it is true that everything is bigger in Texas. Note to self: Keep doors to the outside closed at all times!

I do have pictures of the paw prints in the pool, the lizard head, and the dead bird, but my camera is not cooperating tonight. Hopefully, I will be able to post these soon.