Customer's pool light housing had a colony of tree frogs living in it

Started by tampapoolguy · · 2 replies
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#1
Pulled a niche light out this week to check the gasket, customer said it flickered sometimes, and there were three tiny tree frogs living in there dry as a bone behind the lens. Been doing this 20 plus years and that one's new to me.

What got me is how they got in without any water intrusion, gasket looked fine, so they must be squeezing through the conduit somehow. Relocated them to a bush and the light checked out fine after.

Makes me think about how many little gaps and voids these systems have that critters find before we ever do. Anybody else found wildlife somewhere it had zero business being.

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#2
Only thing I'd question is the conduit theory, that seems like a long squeeze for a tree frog when there's usually an easier way in through the deck fitting or wherever that conduit terminates up top, they're not exactly built for tight crawling. More likely one hopped in while the fixture was pulled for something else years back and just kept using it as a den, tree frogs will find any dry dark gap and move in for good. We get them in the skimmer lid hinge all the time here, never in the light housing though, that's a new one on me too. Screen cage helps some but doesn't stop the little ones, they get through the smallest gaps in the panels anyway. Good luck with it.
#3
We had a tree frog living in our pool light junction box in the yard, not the fixture itself but the little box the wire runs to, and I about jumped out of my skin when I popped the lid to check a connection and one just sat there staring at me. No idea how long it had been in there, box was bone dry too. My guess is same as Chucks, it wasnt some heroic crawl through conduit, it just wandered in one day when things were open for work and decided thats home now.

Kids thought it was hilarious that theres a frog condo hiding in our equipment, anyway. We just leave the lid on snug now and havent had a repeat tenant, though I imagine if theres any gap at all a determined frog finds it eventually.