Duck!

Not really anything to do with baby Lily, but since we have an open forum here...

Ever since we've lived in this house, we've had an issue right about this time of year with migratory ducks trying to take up residence in the swimming pool. The first time it happened, I actually thought it was pretty cool, until we realized much to our dismay that it can be quite difficult to convince the ducks to leave. The big problem is, if they stay long enough that they lay eggs, you're pretty well stuck with them for the duration: your swimming pool becomes officially classified as "wetlands" and you're not ALLOWED to run them off until the babies hatch and they move on of their own accord.

The internet has lots of advice on what to do in this situation, ranging from just chasing them off whenever they show up, to noisemakers, to sculptures of predadtory birds, but what we actually have found to work is to have big obnoxious inflatable creatures bobbing around in the water. This apparently makes the ducks nervous enough that they're easier to convince to leave for good.

Anyways, the reason I'm going into all this now: last summer, we put a thermal cover on the pool. So I figured we would have to worry about it at all this year. But as you can see from the picture below...apparently, ducks are not all that bright:

Sigh...guess we may have to break out the pool toys again!