Chickens Don't Swim!
I live on a canal with many moscovy ducks. These are the black and white ones with a nasty looking red appendage hanging off it's head.
Every now and then they decide that the sand by my equipment pad is the perfect place to lay eggs. Then they decide that my deck is the perfect place to poop. And since my pool is so near by, they can wash and swim in there too...along with the poop.
That wasn't enough for my wife.
One year she went out and bought two snowy white ducks, the kind with the yellow beaks, and a chicken, all at the baby age. We could take them in the yard and they would follow us around. They would never leave the yard and stuck together. Guess the chicken though the ducks were his big brothers. One of the white ducks had a tuft of hair that stuck up like a Sanjaya Mohawk. We called him Moe. How cute right?
It wasn't long before the white ducks were getting bigger and housing them indoor and in a warm rubbermaid tub just wasn't big enough anymore.
We tried urging them to swim in the canal. No luck. We'd literally throw them in, they would swim out and walk right back to the house. We used a different rubbermaid tub with water for them to swim in. Worked for a little while.
One such time, we put the ducks in and leave, like we did many times before. The Chicken walks around the yard, pecking at beetles, grass, whatever caught it's attention. The ducks are in the tub swimming and bathing and naturally pooping, and along comes the chicken. Hops up to the edge of the tub, my guess is that he loses his balance and in he goes.
30 minutes later, we come out and the ducks are now in the yard but no chicken to be found. The kids go roaming the neighborhood and around the canal and again, no luck. As they were away, I go to clean up their swimming tub and there's this little dark object floating around. Too large to be duck Crud...
SO..after the funeral, we "relocate" the ducks to a large lake with other white ducks. This was right before Hurricane Wilma hit us. Don't rightly know where they ended up, but if you should happen to see two white ducks, one with a mohawk, say hi to Moe for me.
OK, so a dead chicken in a rubbermaid tub is not the same as two birds in a skimmer.
So what else doesn't float? I had a Cuban Anole (about a foot long green lizard) partially decomposed in the throat of my StaRite Great White suction cleaner. I've removed dead small iguanas from my leaf trap, the bigger ones can swim very well. I've relocated a family of 15 baby turtles from my pool to the canal. HOW they got there I don't know.
Occasionally, I see one of those Jesus lizards (Basilic) walking across by deck, but I've never been able to sneak up on it to make it run across the water.
Rats and mice are excellent swimmers. It's when it comes to the edge and there's no way to get out that it drowns. There are little floating devices that anchor to the side available, and allows the rodent to get out safely. :lol:
Funny mention of the borates and waters surface tension... our company use to sell a product called DUCK OFF. It would reduce the surface tension and when the duck realized that it was starting to sink, it would fly off. RIGHT. After hearing of several cases of dead ducklings at the bottom of the pool, we pulled the product.
A nearby water bowl or fountain can be set up just for them and may prevent them from coming to the pool for a drink.
Fortunately, I have not found any strange dead critters in my skimmer basket yet.
