I do a lot of shopping at Amazon, and have been for many years now. This is the 1st product that has motivated me to write a review. It is that good. This is a sturdy product that couldn't be easier to use. There is no assembly required, it goes from out of the box, right into the ground. We have had this product installed for roughly 1 week now, and I could not be happier with the result. A little background: We have a large in-ground pool that is responsible for drowning a variety of creatures (frogs, toads, mice, chipmunks, moles, even a small skunk!) We have managed to find ways to keep the mammals (mostly) safe, but the poor amphibians just don't seem to "get it". Every morning there were typically 4-6 dead frogs either in the filter basket or floating in the pool. The morning after a rainstorm looked like we were trying to make dead frog/toad soup! Yuck. I found this product in a catalog, did some further research on the company's site (just the product name & dot com) and decided to give it a try (here on Amazon of course because I sprung for Prime and now hate paying shipping). It really is as straight forward as it seems. You replace your current skimmer cover with this one, and when frogs fall into the pool, they are able to crawl up the ramp and onto the rest of their little froggie day. No more expensive frog life guards required. My only concern is that it leaves out my fine fat toads. But they can easily wait on the ramp for rescue. Obviously for this to be an effective cover the hole cannot accommodate the grapefruit sized hoppers. Personally I suspect the big ones are just too lazy to get out on their own anyway. Technical details: The actual hole size that must be breached by the escaping frog is 2" wide and 1 1/4" tall. This seems to be a good size, and like I said, if they can't make it out the hole they can rest on the ramp. So either way, the end result is the less dead critters. Result: We have had more rain than sun lately, so I feel like this has been a good test of the Critter Skimmer, and far so good! As of this morning there has only been one dead frog! He was tiny, about the size of a quarter, and may not have even found the filter. Every morning when we empty the basket there are some living frogs hanging out on the ramp. Now, not all of my frogs have grasped the idea that they can continue up the ramp and go out the hole to freedom. This is not a fault of the product, but undoubtedly froggie user error. I'm assuming they will get better at that eventually. Even if they don't though, it is no hassle to pull them out since they are clinging to the ramp anyway. Why only 4 stars? Because I'm a tough grader. If my scale is 1-5: one being Abysmal Product-Beware , and 5 being the Holy Grail of Consumer Delight, This is a solid 4. 2019 Edit after 9 years of working hard, we broke the ramp off last week. I assumed our frog population was down, because I hadn’t seen as many frogs in the pool. After the carnage I just witnessed in the skimmer basket, it has apparently just been working hard at saving my frogs, toads, chipmunks and mice with zero effort on my part. Off to add another one to my cart.
