CRITTERS in Your Pool? Ducks, Snakes, Frogs & What to DO! | The Deep End Pool Podcast Ep. 171

Ducks in your pool? Frogs in the skimmer? Snakes in the heater cabinet?! Episode 171 of The Deep End Pool Podcast dives into the wild world of critters invading backyard pools and pool equipment. From flying poop-bombers to angry snakes, Frank and Jacque Disher share hilarious stories and essential tips to protect your pool and gear. Learn how to keep wildlife out, prevent costly equipment damage, and avoid that surprise dead bunny in your skimmer basket.

🎧 Perfect for pool owners and pool professionals alike.
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00:00 - Welcome & Sponsor Shoutouts  
01:15 - Meet Daisy: The Newest Critter  
03:00 - Rain, Warm Weather & Pool Problems Begin  
04:10 - Ping Pong Balls & Podcast Background Sounds  
05:10 - Grandkid Gets Appendicitis While Skiing  
06:35 - Opening Day, Brackets & Clue Play  
08:53 - Ducks in the Pool: Let’s Talk Critters  
10:09 - How to Keep Ducks Away: Tips & Products  
12:17 - Why Ducks in Pools Are Bad for Water  
13:55 - Jack’s Magic vs. CULator Metal Removal  
14:56 - Ad Break: Cyclone Filter Tools  
17:00 - Welcome Back & Daisy’s Wild Side  
18:22 - Frogs, Snakes, Rats & Skimmer Surprises  
21:00 - FrogLog Saves Lives (and Gross-outs)  
23:27 - Landscaping Tips to Reduce Critters  
24:45 - Pool Equipment Dangers: Fire Ants & Damage  
28:45 - Non-Conductive Spray Warning & Story  
30:12 - Frank’s Exploding Electrician Story  
32:37 - Sponsor Break: BluRay XL & CULator  
33:56 - Frank Shocks Himself with Wasp Spray  
35:20 - Send Us Your Dumbest Mistakes  
36:13 - Rodents in Heaters: Why You Should Fire It Up  
38:29 - Using Mothballs to Repel Rats & Bugs  
41:28 - Snakes in Heaters: The Burned Rat Snake Story  
43:42 - Trim Your Shrubs: Jacque’s Mom’s Advice  
44:42 - Skimmer Angel & Hands-Free Baskets  
46:00 - Wrap Up & Thank You to Sponsors  
47:38 - Deep End Theme Song  
48:20 - Final Call: Subscribe, Email & Follow Online  

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Transcript

Unknown: 0:00

Welcome to the deep end pool podcast for pool owners and the swimming pool service professional. All of our sponsors are brands that we know, trust and use in our own business. We are brought to you by pool works for healthy pool people. That's pool works.com pool W, E, R x.com, if there isn't a pool works near you, become the pool works near you. Special thanks to blu ray XL, the best pool mineral purification. System in the industry, Blu ray all day. Fluidra and their many brands, including candy pool equipment and Polaris the most advanced automatic pool cleaners in the industry, Cyclone filter tools, save time, save water and save your back all save pool, fence nets and pool covers over 25 years of providing the best equipment to secure pool areas, saving the lives of children and pet clear comfort a patented hydroxyl based water treatment system, the future of water treatment and our friends in IPSA, independent Pool and Spa Service Association, improving the industry through community education and support. The Deep End pool podcast focuses on residential pool maintenance and may not cover commercial pool commercial pool requirements, please consult the CDC and your local authorities and code requirements for commercial pool maintenance. Now let's solve some pool problems with your host, Frank and Jackie Disher, printer, day y'all. You we talk some critters, and the water is green. How much acid? Hey, friends, welcome to the deep end with Frank and Jackie, his sidekick, and life and on the air talking about critters. We have a new one, and she's probably gonna bark during this podcast. I'm not even kidding. She is a pain in the rear, little daisies. Her name, I'm not gonna say that you wanted to get another dog, yeah, and you're glad we did. No, I'm not. She doesn't even like me. She will. She's all about you, and then now you're mad because she is a puppy, and she barks and she's being a puppy. She's aggressive. You want her to be a 30 year old, and she's not well, we'll slap it out anyway. We have a new critter. He will not go in the backyard with the critters that get in the backyard. No, because we got some stuff. Yeah, we got she's tiny, so it wouldn't even take a hawk to fly off. We have owls. Yeah, we do have out big, five times her size. They're more than that. They are huge. They're they're like half my I mean, I'm only five something. If we had a 10, if we had a 1015, pound dog, I would be worried about it. Those owls perch up. There's they scary. Man, they scary. They carry problems. I worry about small children in your neighborhood. Seriously started getting hot this week. Water got above 70 degrees, did and now we have a rain, a pouring this weekend. Is all rain? Man supposed to get a lot of rain. People wanted to swim this weekend. And, you know, all that rain and Kim's all, everything is going to wash in. It might not happen. Yeah, it's, it'll cool the water off a little bit, but, but, you know, hopefully it doesn't introduce a whole lot of organics for you people that are not ready, I'm never ready till Matt. I don't even think it's warm enough to like Matt end of May. But people that don't have the priority line don't have their water bound seriously. And we've seen a lot of pools like that this week. Yep, yep. Pools started turning. Pools started turning. I had a dive in a nasty bottom. I got another one. I'm supposed to dive in today. We'll see what the rain allows see what it happens. But yeah, so Daisy is so we we record in our game room, and we have a ping pong table and a bucket of ping pong balls and pads and all the things. But sometimes when people come to play ping pong, the balls get like in the corners of the game, and so she has found one. So if you hear a ping pong when I was editing last week's show, I could hear that's our critter. That's our critter in the background. So we had an interesting week. We had so we got to see a Kate, and then our oldest little, our only boy, little. He's not so little. He'd be 13 in September, but he's still little to he'll always be is he 13 in September? He's 13, teenager almost. I've been telling you this for life. Yes, yes. They were skiing in Utah during spring break, and he got appendicitis. Had to have an emergency appendation, and it's been in the hospital all week, the week after spring break, and he can't, he's and it bursts, just a little, yeah, it partly burst. And so we had to stay in the hospital. To make sure that all the grossness, speaking of critters and grossness in your, you know, that's in your body. And so he just got out today, but he's home safely, so hopefully he can go back to school. I'm wondering how far he got on Warcraft in those Warcraft, yeah, Minecraft, Minecraft, excuse me, Roblox and all the I think he's probably beyond Roblox. I don't know, but no, he and I played that last time you see, you see, I know all about, yeah, so, but, man, he's a tough one. He's a tough he's the same one that had seven broken bones in his feet last summer, fall ball, football and all he went from like being one of the fastest kids being one of the slowest kids and his and he kept saying, my feet are hurting. My feet are hurt. And you know my daughter, you know she's an athlete and she was a cheerleader and all that, so she's got some bones. Oh, come on. Tough it up. Tough it up. And dad, you know, he could have played pro baseball if he wanted, but he decided he wouldn't be a doctor, but he's like, Oh, toughen up, toughen up. And then they found out he had seven broken bones, and they felt really bad. So, and we will never, ever let them live. No, I even brought it up on the sinus thing. Oh, yeah. So, so how, how long did y'all let him go before you believed he was actually in pain, hilarious. But the life, the life of littles, is so much fun. What else happened in Oh, today, oh, this week was opening day for baseball. Oh, was it? It's opening day for I missed it. That was Monday. Uh, third, Wednesday, Thursday. I thought they opened on Monday. No, I think for Well, our Texas Rangers, it maybe they got, like, an opening, opening, our opening day for our Texas Rangers, I think, was Thursday, yeah. And then, of course, March Madness. I'm not going to tell you how good I'm doing in my bracket. I'll tell y'all next week, because I don't want to brag or anything. But I'm doing pretty good. I'm doing pretty good unless there's some upsets, and then then you're toast, but then I'm toast. Y'all so and we went and saw a clue. We thought it was a musical, but it was not a musical, which makes me happy, because that means I can understand the words that they're saying, because when there's music, makes me sad, because 90% of what we do is musicals. I still enjoy it, but I like plays. I like plays. I like drama. Then we shouldn't have season tickets to a place that does mostly music. Well, I mean, I still enjoy it, but, but we wouldn't saw a clue. It's a really good play. Fairly short is, what about an hour and a half? It was 90 minutes, no intermission. It was, if you know the board game Parker Brothers clue that you played as a kid, raise your hand. You know, you all did Miss Scarlet in the library with the rope. You know, I'm saying this was a play based off of that. It was high Larry. It was funny, very punny. No, it's very punny. Yes, there were so many times that I looked over at Frank and was like, you would have said that too. It was, I mean, it was so fun. It was a good time. We took two of our employees. We took Tawny and Anthony, yeah, if it comes to your area, and they had never been to theater, and they're like, Oh, we want to go see another show. If it comes to your area, go see it. It It is so good. It was some real talent. No, yeah, Oh, my word. Touring companies, fabulous, yeah? These, these, these better touring shows, yeah, always have really good talent, right? It's like people that deserve to be on Broadway, but they're, they're touring right now. Well, 90% of them have been on Broadway. They just decided to travel, or they didn't have another gig in New York, and they so they're, you know, hey, I'm gonna, I'm gonna travel the country, and let's go. Let's do it. So shout out to bass Hall. Yeah, thank you for bringing in. Yeah, for sure. So you want to talk about critters? Yeah, I've been hearing over and I keep running to the backyard. I keep hearing ducks, uh huh, because we have a pond, and I think we've talked about that, but I keep hearing them. And they've lived in our pool for we've seen them walk across our front yard. Yeah, they get out. Don't land in the pool as well, but we've never had them trying to nest. No no no in our backyard. I'll swim for a little bit, and then it's Yeah. But I've heard them this past week. It's that time, and not just for ducks, yeah. So y'all don't let the ducks in. If they're there and they've already laid eggs, you're not supposed to mess with them. You're not so get them before they lay their eggs. Sure. So if you're seeing ducks in your backyard frequently, you need to run them off. Do what you have to do to get them out of their dogs work really well for that sometimes, but sometimes they just don't care about dogs. I It's like they know which dogs are gonna get them with which dog. So if you got a big, vicious dog or a dog that just hate ducks, then you know, that's probably a good dog, you know? Well, I. I don't know. I guess you asked the dog, I think Daisy might be a duck hater. She would be a duck hater, but a duck could probably whip her butt. So she's 2.9 pounds. When I took her for her puppy wellness, okay, well, she's 2.9 pounds. Oh, okay, she's sub three. Okay, so the dog next door poops bigger than she does. She weighs. Okay, cool. So on the ducks. You know, there's different things you can do. You know, they got all these mylar balloons and stuff like that. You got blow up alligators mylar balloons. I've never heard you say that, yeah, well, I'm not a big fan of I know they sell them on Amazon and stuff like that. But what do they do? Probably, because they float around, or whatever, they move around the ducts, it kind of scares those ducks. You put them in your pool, or you fly them, no, you float them around the pool, you know. And it may be part of that. That thing I've seen where, like you string strings across your pool, or the landing area duck would take, and they typically want to land on water, right? So if you're streaming stuff across your pool, where the duck sees that, because they want a clear path to take off in case something gets after them, right? So if you'll obstruct that path, then the duck knows. Okay, all right, if something gets after me in that backyard, I can't get away, so I'm not gonna land there, so they'll go somewhere else. I've just never heard that. We've done critters like the last four years, and I've never heard that, yeah, it well, it's in, I mean, there's different balloons and stuff. Then, you know, like said, the blow up alligators. What do you recommend I work? You know what? I like enzymes, because they used to oil off their feathers, and the water gets to their skin. And ducks don't like that, because all their wet feathers are waterproof. And also, there's, there's different brands of it. That's called Duck off. I think that's a play on words there. It's called Duck off. But they also have they also bug off, but it just changes the tension of the water. And the ducks don't like that. We have some people that that say, Oh, I'm so excited. Spring is here. We have them, mama and baby in our pool. They're so precious. Kiss your pool goodbye for a little bit. What happens when? When ducks get it? Tell us about that and why you don't want them they poop and they poop and they poop and they stay in your plaster. They add all this organic load to the water that algae loves to eat, and their poop and all that organic matter they're putting into the water eats up your chlorine. Your chlorine is trying to destroy all that stuff so you can lose your pool in a hurry and ducks All right, y'all, they typically don't just stay in your backyard all day. They typically fly away go somewhere else to go eat. They come back and hang out in your pool, you know, just to rest and where they think it's safe so nothing can get after them. And when they flew away. They probably went to a pond or somewhere, and they got all kinds of nice little algae attached to them, and black algae and bacterias and dropped them in your pool. And ducks have been known to have Cryptosporidium in their poop, so swimming with ducks is probably not the best thing that you can do for your pool. So get the ducks out. Y'all, just before they get settled, they need to be out there in a pond or a lake or something like that. They don't need to be in your backyard, ruining your pool. So just get them away. You know, another product, Jack's magic, surface magic. I've heard ducks don't like it. I think it's kind of the same thing that duck off. I think it's similar products, and that's the reason, you know, whatever Jack's magic. We like them. Yeah, Jack's magic. Good people, good products. Yeah, don't, don't get carried away with the ducks. Y'all contact for Jack's magic. I feel like we do. Tim Berry. Tim Berry is our, is our rep? Yeah, and he's actually going to be doing some classes with our people, but we should have him on well, we should and see you later is like their direct competitor. I love See you later, but I love Jack's magic too. They both are fantastic products. See you later does a really good job of removing metals with Jack's magic. You know, they're really strong in identifying stains, yeah, and I love their stain ID kit, because it tells you exactly what your stain is, and then gives you a process of removing that stain. Sometimes it's several steps, because stains aren't always just this or this or this or this. It can be a combination of things that end up causing that stink. But hey, it is time to go to break. So we're gonna go to break. We come back. We're just gonna talk about some more critter issues. We just got my toes. Yeah, she's chewing on my toes. All right. We'll be back in a minute. How much acid, how much corn? Reid, hey, Jackie, hey, Frick. Have you ever wondered how you can clean between all those pesky filter pleats on a cartridge filter? Yeah, I lose sleep over it. I mean, it so tedious and it takes forever. I could never seem to get them all clean. Well, here's a pro tip. Try the cyclone filter cleaner. It uses water pressure from your garden hose to spin the filter as you clean it. This allows all the filter pleats to get thoroughly cleaned out. And the best part is it is fast and doesn't hurt your back. Wow. The cyclone filter cleaner. You got it. The cyclone filter cleaner, you can thank me later. Thank and what I love about their filter cleaner is they have this wand. It's the best filter cleaning spray device I've ever used. We've tried many, many different ones. They got a short version now and they got a long version. But I love using those things, even on our de filters. We use their wands. And do we have a code? We have a special discount code. If you go to cyclone filter tools.com and use code deep end, you'll save 10% on your order so you can buy direct from them. Great stuff. I'm glad I found it. We got one on every truck. My guys love it. Guys don't miss out on this. This is the best filter cleaning system out there, renowned worldwide for quality and reliability, fluid road, the industry, leading global manufacturer of commercial and residential swimming pool equipment and connected pool solutions, has a long history of innovation and excellence dating back more than 100 years. Their extensive portfolio of brands include some of the most trusted product lines in the industry, like Polaris Jandy, zodiac, cover pools, grand effects, nature two CMP Dell Taylor and I Aqua link, so from the pool pad to the pool deck and everything in between, luidra has all your pool needs covered. Hey, friends, welcome back to the deep end with Jackie and Frank and Daisy chewing on our feet, chewing on our feet because we're having critter day, so we're letting her do her thing, and good night. I'm gonna knock her, and I think I'd rather deal with rats. She is a biter. Y'all. She's like a little bunny, a little cotton ball with legs, really, like a little and y'all, all right, she's got a lot of Maltese in her. Yeah, she's more Maltese. She's got a funky body. She's got like, this long neck, I think she looks like a baby. LMA, you're so judgmental. She's got this long, goofy neck. Well, she's your dog, because she likes you best. My dog, my dog. If we get another dog, my dog's gonna be cute and lovable and sweet. Well, she, she's built like a balloon animal, dog where it's getting back. I mean, she just built weird, fluffy but y'all this dog, I'm not kidding. She, she, she got some she is a hot mess Express, and she's got some impressive poos. Hey, kid, she pooed me a pretzel the other day, a full. I didn't see it fully wrapped around completed pretzel. If you'd have put salt on it, I might have accidentally ate it. They're so should not just say that. Speaking of critters and gross things that critters can do in your pool, we talked about ducks. Yeah, we were talking about ducks. Let's talk about some of those things we've covered yet. Just talk about some of the other things you know, real common people get in their pools that they don't want in their pools. And that's, you know, frogs, snakes, dead rats, baby possums, baby raccoons, live rats. You're going through this list as if you know snakes. Well, it's stuff we see all the time, and we're seeing a lot of it right now because people, you know, the mice and everything, are out running around. The rats are out running around. Frogs are coming out of their little holes. I don't care about don't care about frogs or rats or not snakes, snakes. Well, here's the thing, y'all, you got frogs in your pool, guess what? Eats frogs? Snakes eat frogs. So guess what? Guess what might come to eat a frog a snake? So you if you got other wildlife in your pool, other predators may come to eat that wildlife you know, either or which would you like more a rat or a snake? Well, I'd rather have a snake than a rat because I can't stand Rats. Rats are damaging. They cause diseases. I do not like rats. Rats are one of my least favorite critters. The only thing worse than a rat is a cockroach. And I don't see many of those in polls, thank goodness. If there were a lot of those in pools, I might be out of the business, because I ain't kidding you, I'll handle anything but a cockroach. I just lose my skin over that. But you killed a spider for me. The other Yeah. Lot of spiders, and I killing spiders because they eat some of the other bugs. We don't want, I know, but it was a big old honking spider in our house, yeah, but what if cockroach ever walked in the front door? That spider big probably build it like a like a spider monkey. But Spider was big. I always he's just, he's a wolf spider, all right. But anyway, so these critters that get in your pool, y'all, once they get in your pool, they don't want to be in your pool. They want to get out of your pool. They don't like the chlorine. You know, there ain't no lily pads. None of their buddies are hanging out there. You know, there's no chicks to pick up or anything like that. So, you know, animals got, you know, just a couple things they want to do in life, and that's eat and breed. And if there ain't other frogs in there and there's nothing for them to eat in there, they pretty much want to leave, but they can't, because your pool walls are sticking up about four inches above the water level, and they cannot get out of there. And they swim around until they drown, and then you end up having to find them in your skimmer. Oh, I was doing a pool school the other day and opened up the skimmer to show people about skimmer and their little girl sitting there, and I pulled out a dead bunny rabbit, baby bunny. And I feel bad about that. Well, it's come on talking about dead bunnies, but so anyway, so, but these things, they want to get out. So if you'll give them a way out, they're likely to use it. So if you'll like we talk about the frog log, I will put a link about the frog log, yeah, in the description of this episode, so you can just go to Amazon and get it, or come into our store, or other pool works, or other local pool retail stores. Y'all these frog logs, they work. And it's not just for frogs, no, it's for any critter, any critter that gets in your pool, including snakes and maybe even some of the bugs, if you'll give them a way out. This frog log, it's got a floating pad that floats in the water. Has little cloth ramp where they can get up onto this floating pad. Then it has a cloth ramp that they can use to get up to the coping, which has a weighted pad sitting on the coping, so it just sits there at the edge of the pool. I think the reason it probably works is because when they're swimming around with their little heads above water, they can see it, and they'll swim to it and use it to exit. And it's just, isn't frogs, y'all it. It could be baby raccoons, baby possums, whatever that swim around until they drown. Well, maybe if they had a way out, they'd swim over to that get out, and then you're not going to find them dead in your skimmer. Because, you know, nobody would see a dead, dead bunny or dead anything, yeah, but, or, you know, a dead possum or anything like that. You don't see any of that. So, you know, give them a way out, and they'll probably use it. And one of the reasons some people get a lot of frogs. One is if you got a lot of like, bushy vegetation up around the pool, well, you know, critters may nest in that, and frogs will get up in there, and they'll burrow into your little flower beds and things. Because frogs sleep underground, they make little burrows. We used to have a big old burrow in our front yard, by our front porch. It was actually in the grass. It wasn't even in the flower, yeah, but it went down like five, six inches. Is a big, round hole. Finally, I was like, Okay, I'm gonna stick my fingers down there, take them out. Oh, they just, they just, they wouldn't leave it alone. So finally, I dug down in there see what? It was, just a big old frog. Well, he's a toad, but he's big, fat Toad, it's huge, yeah? And I suspect there's some in that front flower bed too, because, well, that would stop there too, yeah? Or snakes or something, yeah? But Lottie, you're turning your lights on at night, all right, and if you're out there to enjoy it, okay, that's fine. You know, if you, if you can enjoy the pool while you're you know, while you're sitting out there, sure, turn your lights on, but y'all, lights bring bugs, and then bugs, then bugs bring frogs, because frogs eat bugs. That's what frogs do, that that's how frog go. Because they eat bugs, and then snakes eat frogs. So they come to eat the frogs, and other critters eat frogs. So, you know, if you're leaving the lights on, you're drawing all these bugs. First of all, the bugs are ending up in your water, and all those dead bugs are in and up in your skimmer. Nobody really cares about a dead bug. You know, nobody has a warm spot in their heart for a dead bug, but you don't want them in your pool. I mean, that's just giving your chlorine more stuff to eat up. There are people that will not kill the bug. Well, you know, there's, there's a lot of people that do a lot of weird things, turning your lights on. You're just drawing stuff to your pool. Having a lot of bushy vegetation around the pool is not a good thing, you know, that's just encouraging critters to be up around the pool, not keeping your your grass mowed. You know, that's not good. You know, it just you don't want to give critters any reason to be in your backyard, right? You know. And you don't want to leave food out, you know, if the kids like sit on the back porch, eat cereal, or, I don't know, hot dogs, whatever, you got to pick all that stuff up, because you're drawing critters. You're drawing bugs, you're drawing all. All this stuff to your living area. So you want to make sure you clean up, keep things clean, keep things neat, and that's going to deter a lot of critters, a lot of lot of bugs, stuff like that, that you don't want to deal with. Now, one thing I definitely wanted to talk about, and we've talked about it before, just like I believe, every critter so we talk about it is critters around your pull equipment, and this becomes, not only you know where it freaks you out or whatever, but this can destroy your pool equipment. So we want to make sure we take steps to keep things away from your pull equipment. And the biggest damage we see done is probably fire ants. And right now, fire ants are starting to build all their mounds, and they're starting to, you know, is this the time? Yeah, we're just now starting to see them, but, and it's still a little cool in the mornings and stuff like that. So fire ants, they move their eggs from level to level to keep them at the proper temperature. So they'll change the elevation of the eggs, and they'll take them to places where it's warmer when it needs to be warmer. They'll take them to places where it's cooler when it needs when they need to be cooler. Well, they'll end up mounting up around motors on pool pumps, and they'll end up getting up into these pool pumps, and they'll get in there, and they'll short these motors out. So you want to make sure that you keep your your equipment pad nice and clean and where, if something is mounding up there you see it. You know it just doesn't blend in all the freaking mulch that you've let over run your equipment pad. So you want to make sure where you see the concrete or the plastic, whatever your pad sits on, you see that, and you keep that clean. Don't let your yard guy just mow stuff and blow it up in, you know, up around the pool equipment. You want that area nice and clean. So if anything's going on, you see it just like if you had a leak, if you got a bunch of crap piled up on that concrete, and you have a leak, you're not going to see it, because it's not going to look wet Greeks. It's just going to fall in all this debris and disappear. So let's keep the area clean. Let's watch for the fire ants, fire. It's also like to get up into time clocks. They like to get up and outdoor plugs and switches. They're drawn to electricity. So they will get up in there and they will pack themselves around electrical components until they short these components out. So you want to keep an eye on that. If you're seeing fire ants up around your switches or plugs or time clocks or whatever, I guarantee if you pull those faces off, you're gonna see a bunch of fire ants back up in your pull equipment. And if you got mechanical top timers and or relays, what can happen is those fire has to get up in there, and they'll short out between the closing of the relays, and the relays will actually weld themselves together toward you cannot turn equipment off no matter what you do or the switch goes bad. And so you want to make sure you watch for that any kind of ants you see around any of your electrical components. You want to address that, and you want to be careful with what you address that with some of these sprays that you use, you want to make sure that you use a non conductive insecticide spray, if you're using a like an aerosol spray, there's ones that are conductive and there's ones that are non conductive. What's the difference? Non conductive means if you spray it onto electrical component, it will not shock you, because that's preferable, yes, because it will not conduct electricity. Can if it's not non conductive. That means it's conductive. And if you spray a time clock or you spray a switch or you spray a plug, you might get a little zap and it hurts and it can flame up. So you want to make sure you use the right insecticide. If you're using a spray aerosol or something like that, read the label before you go spraying it right there. Yes, it will say non conductive, and it'll say how many volts up to how many volts, or whatever. And if it's got that listed, you know, not if it says non conductive, it's good enough for what you're using it with. Okay, so use it just. So just be careful with that. If or you, if you are using aerosol, where I mostly see the problem is people will open up their control boxes, and there will be a wafts nest in there. And there's nothing more terrifying than a wasp flying at your face. Oh my gosh. I mean, so but people, they'll open those things up, they'll go get a can of bee spray or Wasp spraying, they'll just spray it up in there. And if they're not using a non conductive, it can flame up, which is, it's a pretty flame, I'll give you that it is a pretty flame, but it, I mean, it can burn you, yeah? So you drain your equipment, yeah, sure, yeah. Well, in Yeah, if it's flammable and conductive, it. Can shock you. It can catch on fire. So just be careful what you use if you're going after critters around your equipment. Products say flammable for a reason, yeah, and non flammable for a reason. Well, you know, I'll go tell a story, short story before I before we go to break. Years ago, you know, when I was an air traffic controller in Addison, Texas, a little airport, busy. Little airport, one runway. Boy, we stayed busy. What did y'all fly in private? He has mostly, mostly business private owners, a lot of lawyers, a lot of doctors, lot of charter jets and things like that that would fly in business, people around the planet. You know, then people that got all the money, a lot of them probably congressmen, but, you know, whatever. Or they get paid by congressmen, one or two. But we were sitting there as early morning when things are, you know, the little bit over the airport and everything. And we got called by a maintenance person that was going around doing stuff, because they got these underground electrical vaults out by the runway, and we're all these mega relay switches and all this stuff to turn the airport lighting on and off. And so, I mean, there's a lot of power going through these things, because if you think about it, there's a lot of lights on. So we're sitting there, and all sudden we see this huge ball of flame come out of this manhole that this electrician went down in. Oh, and we're like, holy cow. And then this dude comes just crawling out, burnt to crisp, and just lays on the ground. He was a contractor that was paid to go down there and clean all the contacts and the relays make sure everything's good, and he didn't use a non conductive or non flammable spray in electrical control vault. And he learned a pretty good lesson that day, I think. But so, I mean, that's not going to happen at your pool equipment. A big mushroom cloud is not going to come out, but they can catch on fire and you can get shocked. So just be careful with all that. So safe and sorry, yeah. So, all right, we're going to take a crisp electrician to talk, and when we be back, we'll see if we can talk about a burnt plumber or something, and the water is green. Blu ray XL is the power of minerals working for you reduce your overall chemical costs and labor up to 50% guaranteed, whether you have 20 accounts or 20,000 blu ray XL, direct pricing and free shipping to the pool trade. Have you covered improving pool professionals profit and work life balance is what they do. Blu ray XL, the real mineral purifier. Visit them at blu ray xl.com, Blu ray all day. Do you want to stop the cycle of metal staining and keep your pool and spa stain free all year long? Do you want happy customers while saving time and money introducing periodic products? See you later, metal eliminator and stain preventer, your answer for metal free and stain free pools, sequestering agents only temporarily suspend metals See you later, removes and eliminates all stain causing metals like iron, copper, cobalt and manganese, and it changes color to identify the metals removed. Visit See you later.com. That's C, U, L, A, T, O, r.com, and use code Deep End 44 for a special discount. It's not magic, it's science. Hey friends, welcome back to the deep end. We're talking about critters this week because it burned up. Electricians, it is that time of the well, because we were talking about if you just joined us, we were talking about if you're spraying for wasps or spraying for ants, ants or whatever, to make sure that what you're spraying with is non flammable if it's around your equipment, because a lot of times they nest in your heater or in your pump, or in your all that and so. And I know that seems like a little duh, like I wouldn't do that, but Well, there's reason I'm talking about it. The reason why because we've known, alright, alright, I will confess I have shocked myself spraying wasp. I'm shocked unintended. And y'all, it sucks. I'm so funny. It sucks when that bolt of lightning comes just flying up that Wasp spraying through your arm and through your nether regions. Shock any gotta. You're real shocked about that. I mean, to do that a few more times. Yeah? So just be careful. If you are using something like that, just, you know, just got to be careful around your equipment anyway, yeah? But especially if you're like, I'm going to kill these weeds, or I'm going to kill these ants, or I'm going to kill these Yeah, and I'm going to put out this and that, make sure that it's okay, and I'm gonna throw it out an invitation, just so I don't feel so bad about myself. If you've done something stupid with some kind of poison or or flammable products or do something stupid, yeah, just anything stupid. Email us at deep in frank@gmail.com just so I feel better about myself. Anything stupid at all? Anything stupid if you're a husband, if you're a business owner, if you're just well, if you're a husband, you know you've done something stupid, so just share it with wives. You can email something stupid your husband. That would be so fabulous. Great. That would be fun. So, so yeah, I do want to see some emails on that. Y'all send us some information, and we promise we'll do a listener what we will do? Listener questions on the stupid things. Listener response, yes, we'll do that. Stupid people gone wild. So nothing I want to talk about, and we talk about this all the time, is heater cabinets. Now, the newer heaters are not as bad as the old heaters, with rats moving up into these things, because rats, especially the older heaters, they love to move into these heater cabinets because they're typically safe from snakes and other predators that like to eat them and it's warm in there. Well, I think they're, you know, actually it's fairly cool if the heater is not running. Oh, it's true. And if the heater is running, it's too hot for them. So one thing you can do to help repel critters from wanting to move in and make your heater their home is fire your heater once a month or every other week, just for 1015, minutes, just get them out. That'll get it plenty hot to where they'll realize, y'all this, this is not the place I want to be. You know, I like the warmth, but I don't like the heat, yeah? So, so, you know that will encourage them to stay away. But what they do when they do move into these heaters and stuff, they'll get up in there and they'll start chewing wires, and they'll start having babies. And rats, you know, they love to drag stuff into the heater, and they start packing all this stuff in there. And y'all, rats are disgusting. They will sit there, eat and breed in the same exact spot where they poop and pee. So they'll just pack this thing full of crap and everything else, and I can smell it from 100 yards. I can smell rat pee and rat poo. Jackie, tell you, I can walk my house smell that them rats. There's rats around here. Well, I just can't stand smell. I can't hear enough. I could have a rat screaming in my ear, and I would not hear it, but I'm smelling for that could be going on, and you could not smell that thing. I would smell him. I would smell it. But yeah, so you need to try to do what you can do to keep the rats away from your pool equipment and or and especially your heaters. So, you know, firing your heater once, you know, once in a while, just put it on. You know, hey, it's second Sunday, baby. I'm gonna go out and turn the heater on just for 10 minutes. I've heard mothballs. Did you say yes, my big thing, I love using mothballs. Mothballs, you put them in the heater cabinet. You just typically, sometimes there's little holes where the gas lines can go. You can push them through there, but you just want them in the cabinet. You don't want them in the burn chamber or anything like that. You just want the moth balls in the cabinet, because the rats don't like the smell of the moth balls. Where do you are those like at Home Depot? Is that where you get mothballs? Yeah, yes. I think you Well, I was gonna use my line about the, you know, I don't know how they get mothballs. I don't know how they get their little legs apart to get them, but I'm so sorry. That's every time I hear that. I gotta say that, but, but mothballs, yeah, I think get them at Yeah, I'm sure Home Depot, or any place like that, I actually haven't seen them in a long time. Is why I asked. Yeah, I'm sure they still got them when I was a little girl, my grandmother used to put them in her closets to keep away. Yes, well, malls ain't what they used to be. I think they wool. They used to eat sweaters or something, so Well, anything, it's wool. Yeah, you see them all the time. And now I'm like, I don't know that I've seen mall falls anywhere in forever. They got them. They're just not as common. One, one, you know, our houses are a lot more tight, sure, and so, you know, we don't have malls flying into everything, where they can just squeeze their way through a wall. Well, that means they're at the dollar store. Yeah, you probably give them $1 store, but, but just put those. Mothballs in the cabinet, the fumes that they put off the rats don't like. Another thing that doesn't like them is bugs. You know, they keep bugs away. Well, guess one of the things that eats bugs is lizards. No, I don't mind a lizard. I think lizards are pretty cool, you know, they're like little baby dinosaurs running around. And I think they're cool, and they eat a lot of the bugs that I don't like. But if they get into a heater, the problem with lizards is they like to get up in little tight places where they sleep, and they'll short out circuit boards. They'll get up in these tight places around circuit boards, and they'll fry a circuit board. There's one manufacturer of heaters. It's the Hayward heater. And they're notorious. They're new models, probably not so much, but they're older models. Y'all, if I got a call on a heater on and it was a Hayward heater, I knew to bring a new circuit board, and I knew I was going to pull the circuit board off, and there's going to be 123, I found 13 dead lizards behind one circuit board one time, 13 lizards. It was they were having a lizard party when one of them touched the wrong thing and it just fried them all. But, I mean, I pulled that thing into just crispy, lizards just fell to the ground. And so if you put the mothballs in there that should help keep well, I'm not sure if they don't like the smell or if just the bugs don't come to it. Oh, so the bugs won't come in there, then the lizards probably are going to go in there, because a lizard would be much more happier just to step out of bed eat a bug and get right back in bed. But you know, so So if he can eat and sleep in the same place, he probably gonna be a happy little lizard, right? So moth law is a really good thing. Snakes, you know, snake. I have had snakes in in heaters, and typically it's when there's lots of rats in the heaters. I'll tell this story again, because it's the most one of the most terrifying moments of my pull life is I opened I smelled the rats in the heater, opened up a heater, cleaned it. They want a whole lot of rats. There's a few little rats, a little bit of mess that they had made, cleaned it out, and then fired up the heater and just to make sure it'd work. And after about two minutes, a big O, Big O rat snake come out of this heater. And he was not happy. He was burnt up a little bit, and he took his food. Yep, normally, normally, a rat snake is going to, oh, my god, human, I'm leaving. Oh, no, run away. They don't yell but, but they do run away. You know, they don't want anything do with you. They just want to get away from you. This one, I changed his whole personality. He got a cobra on you. He got upset. He came out wanting to destroy me. And, I mean, like a, like a cobra, he was, I mean, just like whipping at me, he he was not a happy snake. And I don't like killing snakes, but I killed that one. I did kill that one, 100 well, and he was probably going to die anyway, because I roasted him pretty good. Bless his heart. You know, my philosophy is the only good snakes, a dead snake. Well, I'm sorry, Snake lovers, I followed your philosophy on that one. I'm scared to death. I just see him. Well, he was in bad shape. You know, he was blessed. He looked like fire marshal bill. He was not. He was he was not good condition, all right. So, you know, just watch, if you get the rats in there, you may draw snakes, just like over at your pool, you know, you got frogs in your pool, you may draw a snake. So, just, you know, be careful. One of the tips that, you know, my mom has always said, My mom's a huge gardener. She's always had like, yard of the month ever. I mean, she just can grow anything. She can grow. I did not get that talent, her yard, her plant. Everything is fabulous. And one of the tips that she had because she'll, she'll go in, she's scared to death, and will run the opposite way for a mouse or a rat, but she'll pick up a snake and just throw it in the opposite direction. You know, not scared of them. But one of the things she said was, and we had a pool growing up, make sure that you cut your shrubs, bushes, flowers, to where you can see the ground. Because, you know, a lot of us have the leaves, and we have all that, and it grows to the ground and you can't see underneath that bush. That's where they nest. Trim it, have your yard guy, or you do it, trim it to where you can see that bottom to where, and especially around your pool, because they'll sit there. And you've got your family coming, and you've got all your and you don't want to snake curled up there. You know that you can't see. But if you have them cut up, then you can see that or other critters. That's really good trim things up, because things, you know, they typically don't want to crawl up into the bush. They want to lay under a bush and on the ground. So that's a really good point. Something else I want to talk about. Is, you know, we were talking about the critters in the pool, and this probably be the last thing we talked about, but critters in the pool, y'all get these baskets where you don't have to get your hand all the way in the water to empty the basket. They got baskets. Well, one, they got this thing called the skimmer Angel. I'll post a link to that too. The skimmer angels little thing, if you have just a normal basket, it bolts or screws to the bottom of your skimmer basket, and it sticks up out of the water. And you don't have to get your hand wet. You can lift the basket out without putting your hand down in there, because, y'all, if there's a critter down in there, you don't want to touch and your number one rule of checking the skimmer is you pull the skimmer lid and you look before you put your hand, yes, because I've touched a lot of things I don't want to touch. The worst I've ever been hurt is a freaking 18 inch Bullfrog come flying out in my face and I fell off a retaining wall. And you've had three baby possessions, spiders and snakes, you name it. I've Yeah, y'all look before, if you don't have the angel, which you should look before you get in. There on these baskets, there's other baskets too, not just skimmer angels. There's baskets that are made with a form stem that comes up, yeah, that that's part of the basket, not something you attach to the basket. It's part of the basket that are also really, really good and, and I'll post some links to that too. Yeah, but yeah, we are out of time today. Though we've we have eclipsed we'll try to do a critters part two. But want to thank all you guys. Want to thank all our sponsors for not a porch near you. Become the porks near you. Blu ray, Excel, fantastic product. We're starting to get them in our pools for the spring cyclone filter tools, best filter cleaning tool on the market. Love it to death. It's fantastic product. See you later. Stain removal and metal eliminator actually will remove metal from the water before it stains, which is extremely important. Influidra manufacturer Jandy pull equipment, players, cleaners. They got the robotics. They got the pressure. Cleaners, suck cleaners. So want to thank all you guys and make sure you email us deep in frank@gmail.com Find us on all the social media. That's YouTube. Do what you can find us by searching at deep in Frank and come see us, still having the grand opening at our Roanoke store and celebrating in our lantana and North Richard Hills stores also. So y'all take care. We'll see you next week. Has the answers for you the deep end keeps your water blue. The Deep End make you pull like new. So take your diamond to the deep end. The Deep End, if you don't mind, a dead joke, the deep end, you can fix what's broke. The Deep End. They're really good folks. Take a diamond to the deep end. Take a dive into the deep end. On deep end, be sure to give us a five star rating and review on your favorite podcast platform and send us questions and topic suggestions to deepend, frank@gmail.com that's deep end, frank@gmail.com at gmail.com and also check out our home page at the deep endpool podcast.com for all of our podcasts and video content and links to our blogs and our sponsors and the products we know and trust. Also find us on Facebook, Tiktok and YouTube by searching at Deep End Frank. I.