Just a story, Mar. 15, 2010

About two years ago, when we were doing the big push to finish the poolhouse before Memorial Day, we had a serious drought in the region. As a result of the drought and perhaps other factors, a large number of squirrels had found themselves in the fetid pool, unable to find an exit. As the weather warmed, the ripeness of the detritus began to reach a level that could be sensed on a step-by-step basis as one approached the actual pool. It is rare to experience space olfactorally, but it can happen, under such intense conditions. Many questions arose as to how to handle the situation, so eventually I got a few buckets and garbage bags, and went down there early in the morning and used a skimmer to extract the bodies into multiple layers of plastic bags, tied them up nicely, and took them home to my garbage cans. I had learned in the restaurant business that there were some jobs that were so nasty that the boss had to do them himself while nobody else was looking. It was a nice sunny morning, though, and they didn't smell anywhere near as bad as they did when the garbage men took them away a few days later. I would contend that you have to practice if you want to know how to have fun doing that kind of stuff. If it wasn't any fun, I wouldn't have bothered. We opened on time, although we have not yet scheduled the body-painting festival.