We have an above ground pool. It's a nice pool. It's a 21 foot round, about 4 and half feet deep. It's an older pool, we got it some years ago when the girls were small. Many a Barbie and My Little Pony met watery adventure over the years upon the blue seas of that backyard pool.

The fall before ..... IK BEN EEN MIETJE ..., I was 'winterizing' the pool. This process consists of dumping buckets of semi-random chemicals into it and draining the water by about 1/3, until its below the side skimmer thingy. Then you put a tarp-like cover on it and continue the process over the duration of the winter by totally ignoring the pool. Then in the spring you act all surprised at how dirty the water is and go spend enough on chemicals to sterilize the Pacific. That's the drill.

So that's what I was doing fall before ..... IK BEN EEN MIETJE .... Let me add a few seemingly random facts at this point and then continue the story :
Fact 1 : Opossums live in Nebraska.
Fact 2 : They hunt around for dark cave like objects in the Fall.
Fact 3 : Oppossums are basically primitive, not far from lizards with hair and very small frontal lobes. They are Not Smart Animals.
Fact 4 : Opossums can not swim all winter.

Some of you might be able to sense where this is all going at this point. Those of you with small children may want to ask them to leave the room.

So, ..... IK BEN EEN MIETJE ... spring, when the air warmed and the redolent odors of lawn fertilizer and cheap hamburgers carbonizing reached my nostrils, some where deep in my brain a switch clicked over from 'Ignore Pool' to 'Nuke the crap out the Pool'.

So I came home and began to remove the cover. I noticed that the water was scummier than usual, and seemed to have some unusual algae, brown and hairlike, floating around. Not having any teenagers around to help me, I jumped into the pool to continue wrestling the cover off with more leverage. It smelled...bad. Unusually bad. Oddly bad. I became concerned that I had not put sufficient chemicals in it the preceding fall. But not one to quail before a little smell, I pressed onwards, wrestling the cover off and getting the oddly bad smelling and sort of unusually greasy water all over me, including my hair. Then..it...floated out from the far side of the pool.

There are moments of crystal clarity in life that are hard to forget. Suddenly the universe seems to revolve around you, and seemingly unconnected facts fall into a sudden new configuration that reveals a hidden secret. Perhaps Einstein felt that same thing one dreary day at the patent office...or Martha Stewart when she invented The Doiley. Who knows. At any rate, when I observed the gelatinous mass of hair, long ribbons of festering flesh, and radom bones poking out that was floating towards me from the far end of the pool...I suddenly knew what the smell and the hairlike algae was from. A possum had gotten in my pool the prceding fall, had drowned, and had spent the entire winter slowly festering in a murky soup of strong chemicals. So it wasn't QUITE rotten..more like pickled, or fermented. Fester is a good word here, I think. Fester. I had opossum fester all over me.

I stood a moment frozen in the middle of the pool...fester dripping from my hair. Then I just finshed tossing the cover off, and got it. I was amazed at my calmness...but really, its BEFORE you get Exceedingly Gross stuff all over you that you experience fear...it's AFTER that it doesn't really matter.

So I cleaned the pool out...I totally drained it, and then I went and bought a 5 gallon bucket of industrial grade dry Sodium Hypochlorite. I got thick clothes on, rubber gloves, and various tongs and a big broom. I then entered the Possum Fester zone, scooped him all out, and began mixing the Chlorine Nuclear Weapon. I mixed the hypochlorite half and hafl in scalding hot water, into a foamy greenish solution that seemed to glow from within. I then slopped it ALL OVER the fester zone inside th epool..it began to smoke greenish fog and actually curdled up the thick vinyl. I left it on. Later that day I went outside to look at the pool, and there was a dead bird, feet striaght up, lying on the middle of the bottom of the pool. I think it had gotten killed in mid flight by the chlorine fumes. It was a Grim Pool of Death, and feeling spooked by this and really never wanting to go in there again, we bought a completely new pool.

DUDE OMFG LOLZ THAT RAT LIEK TOTTELY DROUNED IN THTA DUDEZ POOL OMG THATS SO TEH FUNNY I SHAIT MY PANTERS !!!1!1`1!!