eve_prime | Quite a bother

We had been thinking about getting the hot tub ready for use – we only use it during cold weather, so we hadn’t done it yet this year. Actually, it looks like we hadn’t done it since Valentine’s Day last year, and Valentine’s Day was our prompt for this year, as well as the forecast of snow next week. So today I went out to take a look under the cover.

The good news – no colony of ants had settled in the far corner, as so often happens. It’s a lot of work to clean the ants out. The bad news – a dead newt in the bottom of the hot tub! We only have one kind* of newt here, and it’s toxic. The internet tells me that upon dying in a hot tub, it releases all of its toxins into the water – and those toxins are a thousand times more deadly than cyanide, as well as being a significant skin irritant.

So we drained the hot tub as best we could, although several inches of water remain. Tomorrow we plan to remove the newt, clean the surfaces we can reach, then hook up a different hose to add a bunch of water and dilute it some more. Then I guess we’ll drain it again. Another day we’ll try to remove the rest of the water with a bucket – which is a great nuisance, but apparently necessary. Then we can maybe get it fixed up for use.

* We have numerous types of other salamanders, some or all of which might not be toxic, I suppose, but I’ve never seen any of them, and this critter is no longer identifiable by its markings.