Squirrels have giant balls

Yesterday I went out to check on my pool (daily ritual.  owning a pool is way more work than fun) The little skimmer basket thing, where the water goes from the pool to the pump and filter, is always full of leaves and assorted flotsam.  Daily ritual involves opening up the lid on the skimmer basket and dumping out whatever has collected.

I opened up the thing and found a dead squirrel in there.  EEW!  I was so caught off guard that I screamed, which of course scared the hell out of Muppy.  Oh, and that was the approximate position said squirrel was in when I discovered him.  Balls were looking up out of the skimmer basket at me.

Next dilemma: how to remove dead stiff giant-ball-wielding squirrel from the basket.  I sure as hell wasn't going to touch the damned thing with my bare hands!  I briefly pondered using kitchen tongs, but I knew there wasn't enough bleach on all of earth to render them useful for human food preparation again and I wasn't entirely sure that Designated Hitter wouldn't pull them out of the trash if I turned my back on him for more than 15 seconds.  (the tongs, not the giant squirrel balls)  Luckily we live in the middle of the woods and there are sticks all over the yard.  I managed to get him out with a couple of sticks.

And then I had to yell at Muppy a couple times to leave the damned thing alone.

I just hope to hell that stupid fucking tree rat didn't poke holes in the pool liner before he died.