Be Smarter Than the Squirrel

Don’t get so caught up chasing a nut that you forget the big picture.

I’ve never cleaned a sewer line. But I’m not afraid to get my hands dirty.

One night a few weeks before Christmas, I was cleaning up my kitchen. There was a pot of water on the stove from some shrimp I’d boiled the night before so I dumped it into the sink without a second thought. Leftover shrimp water never smells great. I had hot water running to wash it all down when water started backing up in the other side of the double sink.

I turned on the garbage disposal and was hit with a smell no shrimp could produce. The sinks drained down temporarily, but I quickly learned the line was still clogged and there was water leaking into the cabinet under the sinks.

A bit irritated, I changed my clothes and went out to the garage to locate my hand auger. I found it immediately, which you’d understand is no small feat if you’d ever so much as peered through the window of my garage, and went back inside to take the P-trap apart.

The smell that first came from my sink was nothing compared to what came out of that pipe when I removed the trap, and neither compared to what was coming.

As I mentioned at the top, I’ve never cleaned a sewer line, but I’m not bad with the hand auger. From the point where I feed the cable in, the pipe travels about 16 inches before dropping down about 3 feet and then turning to run through the basement ceiling. From there — it’s been quite awhile since I’ve had that ceiling opened up — it feels like there’s an elbow about every 2 feet.

On this occasion I could only get the cable in about 12 feet. Initially I thought I was stuck at an elbow or joint, so I pulled the cable back a couple feet and tried to go forward again. That cycle repeated several times. At points it felt like the head of the cable was up against the clog but couldn’t get through, and then I kept losing ground.

Finally, I pulled the cable all the way out to inspect the head and start over so I could at least figure out how far in it was. The first time I ran the cable back in, it hit the first elbow and wouldn’t go any farther. At that point I knew I had to call a plumber and jerked the cable out. Incredibly, out onto the cabinet floor fell a heavy, slimy lump with what I can only describe as a cartoonlike splat.

In an instant I went from disappointment at the prospect of calling a plumber and being at least temporarily without a kitchen sink, to relief and a bit of pride in having taken care of the problem myself, to being overwhelmed by the stench.

And then … something caught my eye. The shape. The hair. The tail. It was a flying squirrel.

As it turned out, the squirrel had found its way into the pipes through the vent stack on the roof and fought its way through quite a few feet of pipe before succumbing to the elements. Tough way to go.

Think about that: Just going about your business, climbing into a pipe without fear and then getting stuck and having no way to get out. No way for help to get to you. Stuck against the walls of a dirty pipe. Alone. Knowing you’re going to die. Well, we can debate the consciousness level of a squirrel, but it most certainly knew it was in trouble.

Anyway, facing your last moments, taking your last breaths in a sewer line — can you think of a worse way to go?

You’re not squirrels, I realize. But you regularly put yourself in harm’s way. And you’re a lot smarter than a squirrel, so there’s no excuse to ever climb down a manhole or into a sewer line without all the proper safety precautions in place.

Confined-space gear, gas monitors, they can save your life. And they’re completely worth the hassle. Make sure you can always turn around and get back out if something goes wrong, so you’ll never have to get fished out the other end of the pipe.

Be safe, and enjoy this month’s issue.



Discussion

Comments on this site are submitted by users and are not endorsed by nor do they reflect the views or opinions of COLE Publishing, Inc. Comments are moderated before being posted.