My sister\u2019s first mistake
\nwas to buy a house with her ex-husband.
\nHer second was to buy that house, with a pool.
\nWe were raised on the coast\u2014fished, swam and surfed.
\nSo sand crabs and jellyfish, sea urchins and sharks
\nwere just part of our growing up.
\nIt\u2019s not like we are squeamish.<\/p>\n
When her husband left, she could barely afford the house,
\nso it fell into what we graciously called lyrical disrepair.
\nIt got serious when her backyard became a zoo.<\/p>\n
First, the pool turned green. Unfortunate algae bloom.
\nWithout chemicals to turn it around.
\nShe thought seriously about turning it into a lily pond
\nby throwing mud into the bottom and adding fish.
\nIt was so green it was probably seen from space.
\nSo she pondered putting a Japanese bridge across it,
\nto pretend that it was a pond, so she could ignore it.<\/p>\n
The grass got long. Her mower conked out.
\nThen the frogs moved in. Dozens of loud ones.
\nSo loud she couldn\u2019t sleep. One Saturday, she went out
\nand gathered a dozen big bulls, thought about eating them,
\nbut walked them to the park and released them into the creek.<\/p>\n
Then she noticed the snakes.
\nOne rattler, two garter snakes, and a coral snake.
\nShe solved that problem by giving them the back yard.
\nPlenty of room to walk the dog in the front, she said,
\ninstead of letting him get a snake bite out in back.
\nIt was a good thing, because next she noticed an armadillo
\nwas a regular guest, with several raccoons. They washed
\ntheir food in the shallow end of the pool\/pond.
\nTwo supervising owls visited each night, seeking rodents,
\nbut happy with snakes instead.<\/p>\n
One night a skunk came by and was startled by the dog.
\nThe beginning of the end. Bedlam ensued. A large
\ncan of tomato juice washed one very distressed retriever
\nwho was sure the shower spray was another skunk.
\nTook us hours to clean the house.
\nTraps from the humane society yielded
\none skunk, one armadillo and two possums. The city
\ntook them all away. After advice on reptile control, they
\nsuggested that the flies bothering her house would be gone
\nonce the pool was under control again.<\/p>\n
A week later providence stepped in.
\nHer old employer needed her back, at her old job
\nand her old pay. Suddenly she could afford pool chemicals,
\na new lawn mower, and a yard man.
\nFor the first time in five years, she feels respectable.
\nShe doesn\u2019t know or care where the animals have gone..
\nAnd, no, zookeeper and naturalist are not on her resume.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
My sister\u2019s first mistake was to buy a house with her ex-husband. Her second was to buy that house, with a pool. We were raised on the coast\u2014fished, swam and surfed. So sand crabs and jellyfish, sea urchins and sharks were just part of our…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1075,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[3345,3344,272,17],"class_list":["post-56904","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-marathon-poem","tag-animals","tag-city-life","tag-hour-22","tag-nature"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56904","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1075"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=56904"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56904\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":57370,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56904\/revisions\/57370"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=56904"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=56904"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=56904"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}