Dead groundhog in pool

[coffeeman]

Hi all
It seems like the animal was in pool for a few days as he was bloated and it smelled bad under solar cover.

Question; My daughter believes if the hog had rabies then it will never be safe to swim in pool. I believe a good shock treatment of the water will kill any bad stuff that could have come from hog. She is concerned and I said I'd post here as so many folks here have a lot of information on so many things. Put us all together and were the ultimate mind.

Cheers....Coffeeman

 

[MossRoad]

Somebody poisoned the water hole!

I'd check with your local pool supply place and follow their recommendations. They have probably dealt with this many times.

Personally, it gives me the creeps. When a kid poops in the public pool they close it for a few days while they treat it. And that's just for poop... although some of those kids seem kind of rabbid, too.

 

[Willl]

I ain't swimming in a public pool again.

 

[RonMar]

I had a run in with rabies a few years back, and received an education then. Our dog wrestled with a suspected rabid raccoon. Dog wasn't bit, but probably had saliva all over it when it shot back into the house and into our arms. We were probably exposed to the raccoon spit touching the dog. What I learned from the doc and the vet is that rabies is a VERY fragile virus. A temp change of a degree or so and it dies. It requires warm to warm contact such as saliva to blood directly during a bite to survive the transfer...

 

[toy]

Somebody poisoned the water hole!

I'd check with your local pool supply place and follow their recommendations. They have probably dealt with this many times.

Personally, it gives me the creeps. When a kid poops in the public pool they close it for a few days while they treat it. And that's just for poop... although some of those kids seem kind of rabbid, too.

When I was growing up we had two public pools, We always went swimming in the upper pool and if any kid had the poo urge he would go to the lower end of the pool and let her fly. When it left the pool it was immediately in the shoals and evedentally it broke up on its way down to the lower pool because I never heard of anyone complaining about getting hit with a log in the lower pool.

 

[MossRoad]

When I was growing up we had two public pools, We always went swimming in the upper pool and if any kid had the poo urge he would go to the lower end of the pool and let her fly. When it left the pool it was immediately in the shoals and evedentally it broke up on its way down to the lower pool because I never heard of anyone complaining about getting hit with a log in the lower pool.

YUK! ICKY!! EWW!!!

 

[riptides]

Those shock treatment really do work. I'd be more worried with the stuff you don't see taking advantage of your water source. Neighbors, noctural critters, reptiles, etc. etc.

 

[Double Orange]

My wife uses this site for all her pool questions.
Very helpful people who KNOW what a pool needs.
Trouble Free Pool • Portal

 

[jdbower]

Kids learn quick, don't they? Unfortunately we live in a fear-based society and anyone who's watched the evening news knows that the best way to stop something you don't want is to say it's dangerous. I can understand not wanting to swim in a pool with a bloated critter floating in it for a few weeks, it's a sentiment I share. But I also understand logically that it's really a primal fear that prevented my ancestors from drinking potentially tainted water - perhaps succumbing to the same thing that killed the critter if it wasn't drowned. This fear still lives in our psyche but it no longer has a place in the world of chlorinated pools and modern medicine. If it makes you and your daughter feel better you can drain the pool and start from scratch next season, but I doubt there's a medical reason to do so. If you're paranoid you can bring the corpse into a vet for testing to see if it had the disease and to confirm that rabies can't survive in a pool (but I'd call first, they may want you to use the back door ).

As for draining the pool because of an "accident", that's probably an overblown fear as well but there could be a grain of truth depending on the manifestation. All animal waste products are loaded with living organisms that help us digest our food. For the most part these organisms can't pass from species to species (with some notable exceptions like e.coli and some other diseases), but something that came out of a human can obviously survive in the human digestive tract and is therefore much more dangerous. Every healthy person has a resistance to his specific colonies, but introduce a new colony and it can cause issues. This is why (except for e.coli issues) cow manure can be used for fertilizer but you shouldn't just pump your cesspool over the fields. Where's the irrational part? It's not likely that these things can survive for any real time in chlorinated water in a pool so this may just be the benefactors of a public pool (tax payers or members) thinking it's gross and worth wasting millions of gallons of water to clean it up.

It's also possible that the local news channels created an irrational fear that chlorine in pools causes cancer or autism or whatever the fear-du-jour is and the chlorine levels are down to dangerous levels so they wouldn't kill all the microbes. In this case it's also a false sense of security because I'm sure all you parents out there know the level of hygiene of the thousands of toddlers that go swimming every year - floaters represent only a small amount of the sources for these microbes. Anyone up for a swim in a public pool?

Just remember, our civilization is dependent on the widespread belief that the urine-detecting dye they add to pools is not an urban legend. At least it's sterile...

 

[jinman]

When I was growing up we had two public pools, We always went swimming in the upper pool and if any kid had the poo urge he would go to the lower end of the pool and let her fly. When it left the pool it was immediately in the shoals and evedentally it broke up on its way down to the lower pool because I never heard of anyone complaining about getting hit with a log in the lower pool.

Gosh! I hope RaT doesn't read this thread. He'll be sick and thowin' up for weeks.