H2O Irritation

There is one thing I actually don't like about winter.

I know. Surprising. Sarnic has something she doesn't like about Winter?!?! But it's Cold and she loves the cold!!

lol. Which is certainly true. I love the cold.
But there are some aspects of the cold that are rather bothersome....when it comes to my work job.

-And yes, hypothermia and frost bite aren't good either but we'll not talk about those.

The annoying thing about winter time and work.
Is how dry and chapped my skin can get.
Because, working at a pet store, I'm constantly dipping my hands in and out of the water doing a variety of tasks or catching fish for customers.

Normally it's not too big of a deal.
But with the cold snap.
It becomes a bigger deal.

Especially if I end up spending more time in the water than I wanted too.

Which is the case of yesterday.

Where I fought a one girl battle against the Invasion of our Pest Snails.
More particularly our Trumpet Snails.

As the devils are totally difficult to kill.
I'm sure they have a network of cities within our ancient pipe system. Let alone the various colonies that end up taking over the fish tanks themselves.

I'd noticed the past week or so that they'd been more prevalent these pests.
But I hadn't thought much on it. As I had other stuff I needed to get done first.

However, it had to become the number one priority once we had not only one, but two customers complain about the amount of snails that were visible in the tank.
As it literally was like the swarm of locusts within our systems. Snails crawling all over the tank walls in at least a third if not half of the tanks.
Swarming all over the place.

And I'm pretty sure it was the cold that brought them out.
Either they don't like the cold, or they love the cold.
In any case.
Yesterday we discovered that yes, the snails come out in force in the cold.
And the cold was due to our fish heaters, all three of them, somehow being off.
(And they ended up being off again today too. >.<)
Which meant our tanks had dropped to be about ten degrees colder than they should be.
Not.
Good.

In any case. Once we got the heaters back from their unauthorized vacation.
I set to work, starting on one side of our walls of fish and worked my way over, pulling out every snail I could see on the walls.

I had to stick to the walls, because if I started trying to get all the snails I could see out of the gravel as well...I'd probably spend twenty minutes to an hour on one tank.

Yes. It was that bad in some tanks.

So my main objective was to get the visible snails under control.
Namely. No longer in the tank.

Which meant I spent basically two hours, consistently putting my hand in cold water, to draw it out to the air, to put it back in cold water. On repeat. Only drying off my arm if a customer needed help elsewhere in the store.

So you can image how the dry/wet cycle went on my skin.
Basically. My arm feels raw. Like I scrapped it with a rough brush.

And I don't like that feeling. At all.
However, for the next week, I don't see much relief as namely a) I still can't put my left hand in water. b) we have a corporate visit and the tanks need to look perfect and c) We're going to be focused on pulling snails for the next week.

So. Raw arm is on the docket.
Possibly with continuing sore muscles as well from the awkward positions I had to quirk my right arm in in order to grab the snails out.

Guess we'll see.
But yah.
That's one aspect I don't like about the cold.
That chaps my arms when I spend too much time with our fish.

Until you next see these words;
I'll be watching the leaves.
Enjoy the day!

-Sarnic Dirchi