Have you ever had to call the plumber to unclog your toilet? I asked Tom Brooks of Baraboo Plumbing for the craziest thing he’d ever found blocking one. He described going to an elderly man’s house and working on his severely clogged toilet. Unable to find the cause, Tom had to remove the it and lay it on its side. That’s when he found the culprit smiling at him.

Tom Brooks, who has been a plumber for 24 years and owned his business for 11, has removed cell phones, toothbrushes, watches, and various children’s toys such as foam alphabet letters, but never has he had a clogger smile at him.

You might think the clogger was an animal and indeed, critters appearing in toilets have terrified people. Imagine seeing a claw reach up toward you, as happened recently to a Florida couple. That claw was connected to a leg which was connected to a green, foot-and-a-half long iguana. If that wasn’t bad enough, days after removal, a second iguana appeared.

That would be freaky, but a Texan boy had an even bigger scare. He found a rattlesnake swimming in his toilet. (https://cnn.it/3zM25ri) Many others have found alligators. A man in Australia found a young possum in his toilet. (https://bit.ly/3cUwue4) New York’s sewer system has a problem with rats and several have popped up in toilets.

My sister tells the story of a friend who entered the bathroom and saw her husband hadn’t flushed. Irate, she dragged him into the bathroom. The brown “turd” was actually a dead squirrel. 

But Tom Brooks’ smiling culprit was not a critter. 

Jeff Fitzwilliams, of Wisconsin River Plumbing in the Dells, reports that the most common clogger these days are cell phones. He and his crew have also retrieved wallets, sunglasses, fidget spinners, action figures like GI Joes and a bar glass. Yes, evidently a bar customer dropped a glass down the toilet and never told the owner. These are all quite odd, but Jeff’s craziest clogger ever was an entire ham roast! A ham roast!

I’m having so much fun with this topic I decide to see what the internet has to share. Roto-Rooter (https://yhoo.it/3PM4M1Z) has removed diamond engagement rings, a fake hand grenade, a pouch of chewing tobacco a son wanted to hide from his parents, and Barbie doll heads—why just the heads? One toilet, according to the April 5, 2022 Consumer Report article “Smarter: Weird Things Found in Toilets,” (https://bit.ly/3SzQ4N6) had $400 worth of coins flushed down it. Another had been plugged by a prosthetic eyeball. Are they really big enough to clog a toilet? These are all crazy, but none of these items smiled at the plumber.

After Tom Brooks lay the toilet on its side, he leaned in close and did a double-take. Grinning at him was the upper plate of the man’s dentures. 

The homeowner was hard to understand without his teeth, but joked, “I think I should probably wash these before I wear them again.”

Let’s add more laughter to our lives, shall we? Do you have a funny story to share with readers? Contact me at laundrie@live.com. And meanwhile, keep those toothy smiles coming.