Water parks are a lot of fun and a great place to spend any hot summer day.

For the lifeguards, however, it can be a different story since they have to deal with the guests and keep them safe.

The lifeguard in this story remembered a day when he had to deal with two different animal interactions and a major storm that caused everyone to panic.

When Animals Attack…!

Hello friends! This is another story from my time at the water park -I have a lot of these stories- and I can say with the fullest confidence that this day was by far the best. day. ever.

Sounds like a great park.

This particular water park is 17 acres of fun, that’s a lot of land for a lot of fun. With that, we had a lot of animal friends there.

I was posted up on our lazy river. I think most places have something like this but if you don’t know, it’s an endless loop of water that has generators which propel you forward with the water, thus, you don’t have to swim since it just carries you.

What a great job!

The lazy river was always a fun spot and I was singing to the crappy fun-time sun-time music and generally enjoying myself as customers went floating past. Then it happened.

There was a scream, a woman’s scream and my muscles tensed as I tried to find the source, worried that something bad was happening.

The ducks must love these parks.

Then I heard an “OMG IT’S SO CUTE!” which could only mean one thing: ducks.

Sure enough, about a minute later, some teenage girls were swimming with these ducks. There was a mother duck and five little ducklings trailing behind.

Sadly, many people don’t know not to touch wild animals.

This isn’t really a problem unless the customers start touching the animals, then we get scared for animal safety.

I blew my whistle and held up my white megaphone so the Leads could see me. They got over in a hurry and I had Mel and Holly talking to me. (Holly is actually a manager, not just a Lead)

Mel: “What’s up, V?”

Me: “We have ducks in the river. A mom and five ducklings. These girls won’t leave them alone.”

This really seems like a good team of people working together.

After explaining myself, Holly left immediately to find where the ducks were at but Mel stayed behind, asking if I needed any water. I didn’t but she grabbed my bottle and filled it all the way up anyways and went on her merry way.

About five minutes later, Holly came back to me.

Seems kind of extreme, but I’m sure they know what they are doing.

Holly: “We’re evacuating the river so we can get these ducks safely out.”

I nodded and informed any guests swimming past me that we were evacuating the river for a short while and asked them to please exit once they reached the exit point.

Pretty reasonable.

Some asked what was going on and since it was just ducks, I was allowed to tell them. Everyone seemed to understand, which was a relief.

It took about another ten minutes to get everyone out of the river and once it was all clear, Holly and the other managers stripped off their managers clothes and were in their swim uniforms.

I can imagine that this is harder than it sounds.

It took a little bit but they finally got the ducks out of the water. I’m not entirely sure where they put the ducks after that but don’t worry, the ducks were safe.

An hour passes and I hear another scream. A blood curdling scream.

Oh boy, now what?

I could smell the panic as the screams picked up between multiple people. As I was scanning the water, something darted past so quickly, I couldn’t tell what it was. Must have been a snake.

I was right.

Snakes can be terrifying.

There was sheer panic in the river as people were rushing to the exit point trying to get away from the snake. One customer started screaming that it was a water moccasin. Water Moccasin’s are very poisonous, very dangerous snakes.

Note: This was not a water moccasin.

I can totally see why people would be panicking.

That one stupid customer instilled a panic in people that I’ve never seen before. Other guards were blowing whistles and I blew mine as well.

Once the Leads and Managers got over to the river (they were booking it, too!) we were instructed to help with evacuation procedures and to calm the customers, informing them that everything was okay and we would let them know when they could get back in the water.

I kind of feel bad for the snake.

They were looking for this snake for 40 minutes before they finally found him, curled up in a water puddle under a slide right next to the river.

They got the little guy (he wasn’t a “little guy”) and released him in the fields behind the park. Like I said, he wasn’t poisonous. I can’t remember exactly which breed he was but he was harmless, just wanted to cool off.

Back to the fun…For now.

Everyone got back in the river.

About thirty minutes later, I heard another scream. There was another snake in the river.

I bet the guests were getting tired of this.

As we were evacuating the river again, Mother Nature unleashed a fury from the sky like I had never seen before (that’s a lie).

It had been bright, hot and sunny all day and suddenly, it was dark, ominous and pouring outside. Plus the rain was frigid.

Just stay calm people.

(I live in Texas, by the way.) Then people started panicking about the rain and about having tornadoes.

Granted, the conditions were perfect for a tornado and the sudden change in weather happened to be quite fitting but I was sure it wasn’t a tornado.

Safety first.

There was lightning though so we had to evacuate the entire park, getting everyone under our “storm structures” which means any building that was sturdy and passed city regulations as proper cover against a severe thunderstorm.

All the lifeguards were shoved into our tiny break room. Dear. God.

Hey, at least they are getting paid.

We were in there for two hours with nothing to do. I’m sure you could imagine the shenanigans that happened. We played games and told stories.

What lesson did we learn that day? Leave the animals alone.

The moral of the story…

If you don’t, Mother Nature will strike back with a vengeance. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is what we learned that day.

What a day! At least it sounds like everyone was making the best of it.

Let’s see what the people in the comments say about this story.

I’m sure many water parks deal with this.

Here is an important distinction.

This person has been to that park.

Keeping people happy is important.

This commenter also worked at this park.

Just a fun day at the park.

If you liked that post, check out this post about a woman who tracked down a contractor who tried to vanish without a trace.