Ducks in pools

[gwb]

For de record. Yes… I’ve been in kids sports and competitive outdoors and indoors from 6 and up to junior olympics including WP. I was an Aquatics director at a college for a couple of years with an outdoor and indoor pool. I have my bio degree, and aquatics expertise. I have three kids with “experience as watching my kids hop in a pool” whatever that means. Whole family has dive certs in just about everything including expert, rescue, and dive master. Doing research and rescue dives in the upper Midwest. And for an occupation build water and wastewater treatment plants for small communities and very large municipalities for over 30 years. So yah… I may know a thing about bacteria and viruses. Wanna swim in duck poop and turn a blind okay. But they swim in the waste water plants raw poop tanks… yes… they do. They eat the corn you don’t fully digest. Then, they swim back from the WDW WWTP and swim in your pool with all that plant poop on their sweet and kind little feathers. They are water rats. Nothing more

Hate to rain on your rant, but ducks at best have only a 3 to 4 mile range so getting from wdw water treatment to almost all pools is too far. Also been eating wild ducks all my life and never got sick yet. Which Includes hunting near waste treatment plants. And if you know about germs then you should know about the extensive and intensive methods and tests resorts are required to preform fequently during the day

 

[WinterSolider]

Yes but it does makes it an extreme rarity.

I have worked at Disney since August 2011. It's not an extreme rarity.

 

[mom2rtk]

Both Nine Dragons and Morimoto's serve Peking Duck. Just sayin'.

Locally sourced?

 

[GADisneyDad14]

At the risk of reviving this thread, I couldn’t help but think of this thread when reading this recent blog post about Stormalong Bay’s current work…https://mickeyblog.com/2025/05/05/w...long-bay-at-disneys-yacht-beach-club-resorts/

 

[PollyannaMom]

I grew up swimming in a lake. Ducks do not phases me.

 

[NJTOAD]

Ducks don't bother me, but when they have those late night Marco Quacko games while I am trying to sleep drives me bonkers

 

[AprilsZoo]

Because it’s “invisible”, nobody thinks about the substantial amount of poop that is brought into the pools on dozens upon dozens of suit-clad butts every hour. The plain fact is that no one wipes well enough to clean away 100% of the bacteria-laden fecal traces that we all carry. (The worst of all are kids in the 4-10 range. Boys for longer than girls, ime. Have you ever seen the underwear in a 3rd grader’s laundry hamper? It. is. GROSS! ). I don’t have the exact stats handy anymore, but I remember that bathers bring, in toto, several tablespoons of fecal material into the average public pool during a day of heavy use. It comes in as “heinie-residue”, so we never see it or think about it— out of sight, out of mind.

It is why public pools operate at consistent chlorine levels of 2-3ppm. At that level, the chlorine can keep up with the constant introduction of small amounts of fecal bacteria, various viruses, skin contaminants & urine brought in by bathers.

In the case of a large fecal “accident”, the pool is summarily evacuated and the solids are removed. Then the pool is brought up to a chlorine level in the 3-5 ppm range. Exactly how high is proscribed by the local heath department where the pool is. Of course, pools do not follow similar procedures when a toddler’s poop stays hidden. A swim diaper with an unseen BM could actually create a bigger risk, since the poop could presumably spend a longer time in the water. But somehow people are only freaked out by free-floating turds

Me? I assume every swim diaper is loaded & that no one has cleaned their butt that day. If I can’t smell that the pool is heavily chlorinated, I don’t get in past my knees. If it seems clear that the pool has sufficient chlorine, then I get in and enjoy myself.

BTW— public pools in the US are required to keep a log of their chemistries. In most places, the logs are supposed to be available to anyone who asks to see them. How willing the pool staff are to let you see their log is a decent indicator of how strict their procedures are… basically how on top of things the staff is.

 

[WEDWDW]

Because it’s “invisible”, nobody thinks about the substantial amount of poop that is brought into the pools on dozens upon dozens of suit-clad butts every hour. The plain fact is that no one wipes well enough to clean away 100% of the bacteria-laden fecal traces that we all carry. (The worst of all are kids in the 4-10 range. Boys for longer than girls, ime. Have you ever seen the underwear in a 3rd grader’s laundry hamper? It. is. GROSS! ). I don’t have the exact stats handy anymore, but I remember that bathers bring, in toto, several tablespoons of fecal material into the average public pool during a day of heavy use. It comes in as “heinie-residue”, so we never see it or think about it— out of sight, out of mind.

It is why public pools operate at consistent chlorine levels of 2-3ppm. At that level, the chlorine can keep up with the constant introduction of small amounts of fecal bacteria, various viruses, skin contaminants & urine brought in by bathers.

In the case of a large fecal “accident”, the pool is summarily evacuated and the solids are removed. Then the pool is brought up to a chlorine level in the 3-5 ppm range. Exactly how high is proscribed by the local heath department where the pool is. Of course, pools do not follow similar procedures when a toddler’s poop stays hidden. A swim diaper with an unseen BM could actually create a bigger risk, since the poop could presumably spend a longer time in the water. But somehow people are only freaked out by free-floating turds

Me? I assume every swim diaper is loaded & that no one has cleaned their butt that day. If I can’t smell that the pool is heavily chlorinated, I don’t get in past my knees. If it seems clear that the pool has sufficient chlorine, then I get in and enjoy myself.

BTW— public pools in the US are required to keep a log of their chemistries. In most places, the logs are supposed to be available to anyone who asks to see them. How willing the pool staff are to let you see their log is a decent indicator of how strict their procedures are… basically how on top of things the staff is.

Well alrighty then.

Fascinating Fecal Facts.

 

[CalSea12]

I wonder how the ducks feel about swimming with us humans... I mean we have a ton of germs.....

 

[thanxfornoticin]

I wonder how the ducks feel about swimming with us humans... I mean we have a ton of germs.....

Perhaps that's why we see so few of them willing to take a chance in a human pool?!

 

[Tink0808]

Wonder how much they swim when pools aren’t open to us humans . I don’t particularly like ducks in pool so I’ll just shoo them away . No harm no fowl