The Wallace Operation Safety Page

Eek! A Mad, Vicious Snake!

A cautionary tale for do-it-yourself folks.

Let me introduce you to my Dad. At the time of this (mis)adventure he was 84 years young. At various times of his life he has been a foundry man, a jig and fixture builder, a finish carpenter and a cabinet maker. He owned his own TV repair shop (remember TV repair? your age is showing). He even spent some years with the US Postal Service. He is a very clever guy and can probably tell you how to fix or adjust almost anything mechanical that isn’t working like it should. He is also one of the least patient people I have ever met.

One day last year while I was at work the kitchen sink stopped up. Seeing this as an opportunity to show off his skill in fixing stuff, Dad breaks out the power auger that he bought about 5 years back when the drain stopped up.

This power drain auger is a great ravening beast; it is about 2 feet square by 3 feet long, has a 1/2 horsepower electric motor and weighs in at well over 100 pounds. Dad can't lift it (did I mention he's 84?) so he has my grandson move it, with the help of a hand truck, around the house to the clean-out port under the kitchen sink. Grandson tries to offer help but he's "in the way and ought to just go watch TV".

My wife urges him to let the boy help or to wait for me to get home until he yells at her (something about being able to do this himself) and she goes away.

Now the auger has a squeeze-bulb actuated power switch and is meant to be used from a standing position with one foot on the bulb and both (gloved) hands feeding the snake into the drain. Dads back being over three quarters of century old and sometimes abused isn’t what it used to be. So he gets down on hands and knees, puts one knee on the bulb and the auger takes off. He rises to a kneeling position and starts feeding the snake into the cleanout. All is progressing well until about 25 feet of the thing is down the hole where it finds the blockage.

Now he's done this a couple of times in the 5 years that he’s had the auger so he knows the tip of the snake is hung up and the motor is just twisting the spring wire into knots, but he can't get off the squeeze bulb to stop the motor. So he gives the snake a yank to back it off the hang-up.

This is where exciting things start happening - very fast.

In the blink of an eye, about 8 feet of the snake backs out of the pipe, wraps a full turn around the end of his right thumb and bites down - hard (did I mention he has gloves but was too impatient to find them?). So, by the time he wobbles off the bulb to get the motor stopped the last knuckle of his thumb is hanging on by only a callus and he's so tangled up and off balance that he can't move.

He yells for my wife who, when she sees him on the ground tangled in plumbers snake does about two double-takes and (incredibly) remains calm. She throws the power auger into reverse and gives a couple of turns to untangle the kinks and it lets go of his thumb - mostly. It is no longer wrapped around his thumb, but now some bits of his thumb are wrapped around it - and he can't free himself. He's a bit shocky by this time and somewhat incoherent.

Wife goes to call the paramedics and sends grandson to help. Grandson untangles the bits (he said it was gross but kind of cool - kids, go figure) and helps great-grandpa to a sitting position just as the paramedics arrive.

All this happened about 2 pm. At about 10 o'clock that night the orthopedic surgeon just snipped the little bit of remaining skin through, chucked the joint-of-thumb in the biohazard box and sewed up the stump.

The Moral: be patient, be safe, use your safety gear!!