Friday, June 14, 2019

An Escape Ramps Weekly Link Round-Up




I've loved swimming pools ever since my grandfather bought me my first three-foot-deep above-the-ground pool when I was eight. I knew how to swim before then, and once I had a water source, I often spent hours in it. Mom very quickly enforced the "get your chores done first then you can get in the pool" rule.

There are lots of memories wrapped up in the pools of my youth. One of the most vivid is of a neighbor's granddaughter coming over and insisting that she swim in that very first pool of mine and then crying and howling because she got wet. (The looks on our faces were priceless.)

There are quite a few things involved in owning a pool. When I had dogs, the first thing I did was to teach them how to get in and out. My proudest moment was the afternoon I taught a child who was petrified of the water to not only get in but also to have a lot of fun.

Especially in the desert, pools are magnets for wildlife. I've gone out and found a snake (alive), a gopher (dead), and a pot-bellied pig in the pool. Michael Phelps could not have beat me out of the pool the day I found I was sharing it with that snake! And let me tell you, trying to get a floundering pot-bellied pig out of the pool on your own is NOT fun!

But the saddest thing is going out and finding wildlife that have fallen in and drowned because there was no way for them to get out. I don't like fishing dead critters out of the pool, so when I stumbled across "escape ramps" to prevent this from happening, you know I had to get them. I don't know if these have saved any critters, but I do know that our resident Abert's towhees love playing on them. I'm looking forward to taking photos of the towhees in action once the pool water has warmed up enough for me to get in.

Time for those links. Head 'em up! Mooove 'em out!



►Books & Other Interesting Tidbits◄

►Channeling My Inner Indiana Jones◄


►Channeling My Inner Elly Mae Clampett◄
  • An alligator was found relaxing on a gator raft in a Florida pool. (Ya just can't make this stuff up.)
  • An artificial olfaction expert explains why a dog's sense of smell is still superior to any amount of computer code.
  • Bonobo mothers interfere in their sons' monkey business.
  • The Tower of London welcomes baby ravens for the first time in thirty years.
  • For the past decade, a mama duck has paraded her ducklings down a nursing home hallway in New York.
  • Solved: How the "monstrous" iguanas of the Bahamas got so darn big.
  • There's a monument to Malchik, a stray dog who lived in a Moscow metro station until his tragic death. 
  • The science behind a hummingbird's hover.


►The Happy Wanderer◄


►I ♥ Lists◄



That's all for this week! Don't forget to stop by next Friday when I'll be sharing a freshly selected batch of links for your surfing pleasure.

Have a great weekend, and read something fabulous!



13 comments:

  1. What a mental picture, Cathy, of you and that snake in the pool! Yikes! And, no, trying to get a potbellied pig out of a pool has to be a major chore. I think that ramp is a great idea, and I'll bet the animals really are glad you have it. Now, speaking of water, I'm wondering if they will actually take tourists to the Titanic. Oddly enough, even though, as you know, I love learning about sunken ships, I wouldn't want that site to become a tourist attraction. Too much risk to the ecosystem, the wreck itself, and more. I know they're doing it very carefully, but I have concerns...

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    1. So do I. The Titanic is NOT a tourist attraction.

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  2. I'm not fond of snakes, but not terrified of them--but I would be if I found myself swimming with one! The ramp is a great idea for keeping wildlife from drowning. Finding a dead critter in the pool would not be the best start of a day.

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    1. I think I swam faster because the snake was swimming toward me!

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  3. Oh, the pot-bellied pig in the pool might be a first! Maybe an item for Ripley's Believe it or Not!

    Thanks for the links.

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    1. At the time this happened, a news helicopter would fly overhead regularly, and as I wrestled with that blasted pig, I kept muttering, "Stay away, helicopter, I don't want to be on the evening news!"

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  4. Reading more links, I say: Bonobo mothers give new meaning to the term "Mama bears." Yikes. So the son never leaves his mother, not so great for the son's mates. One false move and Mama takes action.
    Wow, would I love to live near Mainely Mysteries. Those women know their mysteries, and in such a beautiful location. Wish I lived down the road and could mosey over there and look at books forever, even buy some.
    And inheriting intelligence from grandmothers, hmmm. My maternal grandmother was quite a formidable, but smart woman. An immigrant, she worked at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory (absent the day of the fire) and was the person the other women came to with grievances. After dealing with pogroms, standing up to bosses was nothing to her. So, I'd be quite fortunate to have her genes for intelligence.

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    1. You do have her genes, Kathy. I hope I've made my maternal grandmother happy with what I've done with what she passed along to me.

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  5. And allergies: I knew I could blame it on the males of the species -- plants, that is. We need more female trees in this city.

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    1. We need more female trees almost everywhere in this country.

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  6. Was the pig a neighbor's pet? We did have a pool growing up (major kudos to my dad for all that heavy lifting!). I do remember there would be a certain time of summer where there would be so many June bugs that it would be hard to keep up everyday.

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    1. The pig belonged to someone in the neighborhood. I never did find out who. Either they moved, they got rid of the pig, or the pig's pool experience put the fear of the Lord into it because I never saw it again. I ought to write a post about that. I still remember the bruises. And the squealing!

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