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Life Matters: Mysterious Toilet Clog Reveals Fowl Play

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If ‘a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush’ then what is a bird in the toilet worth? 

Since moving into our new home almost two years ago, we have had intermittent plumbing issues with our downstairs commode. The porcelain in question is situated in the half bath on the main level and is usually only frequented by visitors. We’ve been fortunate enough to avoid any embarrassing moments with our company plugging up the pipes but keeping a vigil for potty malfunctions does grow tiresome.

 The coup de gras on my longsuffering arrived when the super-duper, long-handled plunger guaranteed to suck anything up failed to dislodge a rather stubborn clog. My plunging resulted in a detestable ‘soup’ and much gagging on my part. I approached the dirty job again with more vigor and discovered that it’s possible to turn a plunger inside out, much like an umbrella in a wind storm. Unfortunately, just like an umbrella in a wind storm, the plunger also has the ability to snap right side out again. This action caused a cesspool tidal wave and resulted in a stinky time out for me.

 The sewer water in the toilet receded during the night and if the “Out of Order” sign I hung on the bathroom door didn’t convince my husband, Patrick, to investigate further then the sign on my forehead that said “Out of Sorts” most certainly did. He unscrewed the floor bolts on the commode and carried it outside. A few moments later he came back into the house with an odd look on his face. “Have I got an article for you,” he said.

 I didn’t want to see the john, much less write about it, until Patrick tipped the toilet up to reveal a cluster of black feathers and two orange feet. I was stunned.

 “Is that….a bird? It was indeed a fine feathered friend. The feet were followed by two wings and head with a yellow beak.

 “How..?” My voice trailed off as my brain fired in fourteen different directions at once and hit a dead end at every one of them.

 “At one time, the only things you worried about finding in sewers were alligators,” reports an April 2009 article in http://www.dailycognition.com  on the weirdest things ever found in sewers or drains. The article goes on to say that Roto-Rooter – the international plumbing and drain company – has rescued everything from false teeth and iPods to live cats and prosthetic eyeballs.

 In an even more bizarre story: “A woman in Germany put an end to her troubled marriage by chopping up her husband and flushing parts of him down the toilet, authorities in Brisbane said on January 9, 2008.”

 “‘You won’t find him, I’ve flushed him down the toilet,’ is what she told [her children],” said Andre Hartwich, a spokesman for police in the western city of Duesseldorf.”

 A quick search of those things that are safe to flush down the sewer pipes turned up multiple lists of things NOT to flush. Among them are such things as dryer sheets, coffee grounds and food scraps. I suppose if people are that idiotic they should also be told not to stuff toilet paper down their kitchen disposals.

 I don’t know where the bird in our toilet pipes came from or how long it had been there but I daresay that the moral of the story is: Those who flush foolishly may end up getting theirs in the end.