Blue Beauty

~~~The children's book is coming: Big Blue's Quest toward Beauty~~~

I honestly don't know if we've hit the end of the story as summer draws toward a close and as Big Blue finally attained some semblance of beauty.

The story could turn into Blue Beauty and the Beast if Stan and Geneva Meserve's cautionary telephone call yesterday develops into anything.

I had just come in from checking the pool and happily patting myself on the back that finally, finally I had done the job right.

The phone rang.

It was Geneva.

"Stan's worried that the moose may have gotten into your pool," she said. "Is your pool all right?"

Little did Geneva know the WHOLE story since the story she had read in the most recent River Journal. So, I had to tell her about the big rain storm last week and how the buckets of water caused the pool to overflow its banks and how water flowed everywhere and how it was like a dam/damn disaster---however you want to look at it.

She hadn't heard about the tree toad invasion or the mud puddles or my inability to empty the mud puddles and how I tried to fill it again only to have it overflowing its banks once more just as I was leaving for town the day before.

"A moose?" I inquired, thinking to myself, "That's all Big Blue needs."

Geneva told me that Stan had discovered two clean breaks in the barbed wire and electric fence between his pasture and ours. Then, Stan joined our telephone conversation and told me that he had found a break in the fence down by their big cottonwood tree, not far from our pool area.

The Meserves were genuinely concerned that Mama Moose (I don't know how Geneva knew it was a female) had discovered our pool and may have been bathing in it.

I think they decided that when Stan had gone by with his 4-wheeler with fence-fixing materials and had observed the misshapened, flattened-out mess lying there over the fenceline.

I assured them that any pool problems I had were generated by the operator's inability to fill the pool properly.

But then I told them of my most recent success and how the pool would now have more water (ouch, on that water bill) than ever before because I had taken the time to put the bottom seam in the right place and and leveled out the pool platform some more.

My only concern---as we talked about possible moose-pool invasions and field mice being the naughty culprits who ate the entire interior out of one of my manure-pile watermelons---was that strange things do happen in my life, and now that I have finally mastered Pool Filling 101, a moose could come in the night and stomp on my parade.

"Oh well," I said to my next-door neighbors, "if it happens, my children's book will be that much better."

We hung up, I shook my head, thinking of the possibilities and went out several more times during the early afternoon to see that no four-legged creatures had come for a swim on the blistering hot afternoon.

Long about 3:30, I climbed the ladder, said hello to two tree toads still taking up residence in small pockets beneath the pool rim and took a refreshing dip in the cool, deep water. Bill came home from his hike later and did the same.

If a moose came to visit during the night, at least we got one decent swim out of our Blue Beauty before its walls came tumbling down one more time.