Decaying possum in my pool.
 

So I come home after a real crappy day of getting my ash kicked by contract managers, city agencies, workers and of course my partners.

Upon arrival home the wife prepares my vodka/sprite and I tell her that since we have time before dinner I'll water the plants around the house.

I do the side and work my way to the backyard. I have been very busy latley and I have not been in the yard since late last week. I get this powerful dead something or other smell.

In the past there have been animals that have crawlwed under my nieghbor's deck and died in the pool pump pit so I figure it must be coming from George's yard.

No....I see a thousand flies gathering at one spot on the deck. So I go and investigate.

Uhhhh!!!! WTF? NOooooo! There is a possum floating under the solar cover and it is a complete mess.

Foolishly I tried to pick it up with the skimmer, no good. I keep trying and try as I may my new friend decides to start to come aprt in chunks. Ewww! I ran away and vomited. I got an old tee shirt and sprayed it with interior car scent I got as a gift with an order and wrapped it around my breathing holes.

I finally get him, most of him up and into a black trash bag. I then get bleach and bleach the crap out of the deck, staining it lighter of course.

I treat the pool (biguanide) with shock, clarifier, enzyme stuff and oxidizer emptying whole bottles in to the pool. Vac the pool and skim some more. Wash everything down again and again. After 2 hours all is good at least much better.

The stench was incredible, it is still in my nose. I tried everthing I could think of to get it out. I took an incredible long hot shower and started to feel a little better. I had another cocktail, as I really did deserve it.

I went into the kitchen and asked what was for dinner, thinking to myself, damn I can't get that smell out of me!!. My wife had prepared shrimp scampi over angel hair pasta, ummm. The shrimp had thesame sour fishy smell as the carcass and surrounding area. I made a grilled cheese and called it a night.

I got up this morning and was out in the yard at 5 am skimming and bumping the filter. The pool is clearing up and I expect it to be clear in 24 hrs.

Any thoughts if I should do more to mitigate the after effects? The water does not smell.

Sheeesh!

Yuck!
I'd plan on doing a good vacuuming of the pool when you get home tonight, things may have settled to the bottom. Oh, back flush your filter too.

Wonder what sort of filter mask would have kept it out of your nose?

Good man, to have delt with it! Many would have just called someone.

I know your pain to some extent. We have had frogs, birds, a rat and dog poop. Shock the live'n shyt out of it. Chlorine and more Chlorine is your friend in this case. You would be surprised at how quickly that stuff with sanitize and mine is a salt water pool.

Ohhh goody when can I come over for a swim...nothing like swimming in dead Posum water...

What a mess. I have a weak stomach, would have been ugly(er?). Try and get what you can but let the pool pump and chlorine do its thing. Check the levels, it'll be fine.

Are you 100% certain it's not playing 'Possum?

As much as I hate fishing leaves out of our pool, so glad we don't have a cover. I can check the pool a few times a day out the kitchen window that way!


And honestly, I do a total water change and filter cleaning after that....


I'm about to barf just thinking about it!

ooh, that's bad :D

i think the possum's day was significantly worse. :)

That's what you call "fall-off-the-bone" tender....


http://moderateindulgence.com/wp-con...-the-Bone.jpeg

I was thinking that, too. Hahahaha!

Other than making sure the solar cover doesn't have residual possum slime on the underside, call your go-to pool guy and ask them if there is anything else you should do.

Isn't that who we are?

Going to the pool guy this afternoon. I wonder how a possum cacciatore would taste.;)

It was not a pleasant experience.

I have a friend who was a professional diver. He said recovering dead bodies was never fun, because (other than the sadness of the events) if he'd pull on a limb to extricate a person, after a few days of being submerged, said limb would often separate from the rest of the body.

Solar cover in the trash.

We had a possum in the hot tub (106*) while on vacation.
Possum Soup when we returned a week later.

We had to drain and sanitize.

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1466010568.jpg

Too funny and so true.

Yeah, spoke to the pool guy. Draining and sanitizing sequence commencing.

Yep, treat it much the same as you would with a Code Brown.

We eat meat to-niiiiight!!!

Can't help but think of Cletus when I hear about 'possum
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Drain and sterilize is the way to go. Only thing worse than dead critter is necrotic bowel. If you have trouble with critters hanging around, you can pick up some fox urine at a hunting store and baptize the perimeter, so to speak. Pretty pricey pee though. Hope you got your truck okay.

Tob,

Yea I sent 2 guys and they left Sacramento Thu PM and arrived in NY Sun early morning. He said the truck ran like a top. We did put on 2 new front tires in Nevada to be sure.

thanks a million for you help!

Thankfully the critters organs appeared to be intact. Yum

Mike

Imagine if you had stew for dinner. :D

The next day's farts would have been fantastic.

Sick SOB. :)

I had a pssoum die under the deck. By the time I figured it out it took full hazmat. Triple contractor bagged the gooey remains and I could still smell it from 25 yards.

I am soooo happy that happened to you and not to me.

Possums are rather gross looking even when they are alive and healthy.

We have possums in Australia, but they have a size advantage over the American possums, ours are the size of a decent sized domestic cat.
When I was 7 I, like a lot of kids, was into dinosaurs and thought I had a pretty good handle on fossilisation. Animal dies, soft parts turn into dirt, skeleton remains.
So, when I came across a freshly dead possum one day I thought (naturally enough) "Cool, possum skeleton time!" I took it home, stuck it in the garage cupboard for nature to take it's course, and...promptly forgot about it.

Until, my mother noted a steady drip of 'possum soup' spreading across the garage floor.


That took some explaining

down here it's turtles, crawfish, possums, frogs, mice, snakes and toads. when changing a liner of a pool that's been down for a couple years, the "water" gets pretty thick when down the the last foot or two. I can walk in the water and my socks don't get wet. I've had to shovel water into buckets because my pump won't pick it up. imagine the smell of a thick soup of all the above, add some turtle shiit, thousands of tadpoles, 6" of rotting leaves. mmmm!

Good thing it wasn't a horse...

Drained the pool yesterday. I brought home a 80gpm dewatering pump with a 2½" discharge that we use a work.

It was fun watching the water disappear. Soaking the DE filter in muratic acid. Tomorrow is bleach day!

I needed this like a hole in the head. Oh well, one must keep moving forward!!

Funny story. I have heaved when having to pick up after a dog so I know where you're coming from.

When our pool was first built, the plaster guys finish and water must immediately be put in it with trucks so the plaster doesn't dry too quickly and crack. The very next morning, I look out my bedroom window and I see a groundhog swimming around in it. He couldn't get out and he would swim to a side, thrash furiously with his front paws on the coping to climb out, give up and swim to the other side and try again. I wanted to shoot his ass right from the window. When I got down there he had miraculously not harmed the soft plaster. I ended up putting a plank into the water and went back in the house and watched him climb onto the plank and onto the patio. He sat there for a minute like he couldn't believe it, then ran off and we've never seen him again.

First world problems... :)

Imagine soup for the villiage for a month