Since home swimming pools create a very big and real hazzard, follow these steps to minimize risks:

Completely enclose outdoor pools on all sides. Make sure that gate is self closing and latching. Install a pool side telephone and rescue aids Get trained in first aid and CPR Never leave your children unattended in or around pool, not even for a moment. Hot tubs and children also don't mix. Ensure that your hot tub is covered very securly when not in use. In addition to dangers of drowning, hot tubs pose other risks to children. The water temperature may be too high for them to tolerate -- temperatures over 100 degrees may increase a childs heartrate to dangerous levels.

Water play can be great fun -- please play safe!

"Dust hippos?"

"Yes, now suck up dust hippos," she demanded.

"They can't be hippos."

"Bunnies live in forests and grasslands. Hippos live in rivers and swamps. If that's a swamp, those are hippos," she declared. "Now suck 'em up."

"I can't do that. Hippos are an endangered species."

"What makes you say that?" my wife wanted to know.

"Well, you don't see too many of them going for second helpings at Golden Dragon Buffet or meandering through park on their unicycles or hailing a cab outside train station, do you?"

My wife looked at me as if I had just said something strange. "That's because hippos live in Africa."

"Oh."

"Vacuum up dust hippos," she added.

"But that's our swamp dust hippos are swimming in. What about our ecosystem?"

"Swamps are wet, forests are dry," she replied.

"What on earth does that have to do with vacuuming under bed?"

"Just take a look under there. Dry. Dry. Dry. That's not a wetland," she answered.

"It's not?"

"No. It's like a dry forest just before forest fire," she responded. "The forest fire your vacuum will create."

This was another unexpected twist in plot. "You want me to set fire to forest of our household ecosystem? That would be devastating."

"Occasional forest fires are a vital element in a healthy ecosystem, essential to regeneration of many species of plants," she recited.

"Really?"

"Yes. It's right there on page 943 of Household Ecosystem Analogies Management Guide."

Reluctantly, I bent down and sent vacuum on its first sub-bed reconnaissance mission. Sigh. Who could have known that my wife had memorized entire Household Ecosystem Analogies Management Guide?

Still, I wondered what hippos were doing wading in our little forest.