Birthday visitor

Along with "Happy Birthday" calls, Facebook/MySpace messages and e-mails (thanks, by the way - you guys ROCK!), I received an unexpected visit this morning.

I took the dogs (we have Mica again for the week) out to go to the bathroom before I left for work and spotted something in the pool.

Disclaimer: Please ignore the crappy landscaping around the pool. It's a work in progress.

The THING was small, so at first I thought it might just be a leaf that had sunk to the bottom, which, weird...we have no trees around the pool. I took a step closer to check it out.

Still puzzled by the sunken leaf/THING, I stared a little harder, willing it to identify itself.

Then, it MOVED.

Yep folks, that would be a real-live crawfish, swimming around in our pool. WTF man? We have no bayous or rivers or creeks running behind our house. None of our neighbors have recently had a boil. The flooding earlier this week didn't wash masses of water INTO our pool. I have no frickin' clue where this little dude came from or how he came to be in our pool, but he seemed quite happy to be there.

Our pool guy comes today to clean and chlorinate the water, so I left Little Buddy in the pool for Jeff to find. I'll be curious to know what he did with him - flinging him over the back fence is what I assume will happen...