Ozzie the Pool Pet

Not especially a wild animal lover, nevertheless, from pics of Australian animals sent by a friend, I saw two that would be excellent bathtub or pool pets and that brought to mind our years in Apalachicola. Lynn, a parishioner friend, had a lovely home across the river and bay, on Magnolia Bluff, across the bridge on the Eastpoint side. When Lynn was away, Linda and I would stay there, both to mind the house for her and as a refuge from the constantly ringing phone and doorbell at the rectory. Lynn was a bird lover and at least one stay we saw blue buntings gathered at the bird feeder just outside her living room window. And she had a lovely swimming pool.

The pool was in a screened enclosure in a wooded area some twenty or thirty yards behind the house. In my forties and fifties, dark nights I swam naturist style there. Linda would not go in the pool at all, because it was so cloudy murky that even with pool lights on, visibility was but an inch or two, and she was concerned about reptilian creatures making their way through holes in the screen and into the pool. That was unlikely, of course; also, Florida animals are friendly toward humans, even fear us, and make affectionate pool and bathtub pets. 

The gentle fellow beside the boat would’ve appreciated the equally murky waters of Lynn’s pool; but unlike the waking and stirring in the waters of that pond outside the cave in Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, I never saw even the slightest ripple of movement in the pool. Still, I reckon one never knows what lies beneath the surface.

This one does seem too large to come up the plumbing into the toilet.

T