Grate Expectations

You’ll want to make sure you’re not sitting down when you read the next sentence. In Israel a man was recently sitting on the toilet when a snake came up from below and bit his penis. Upon arriving at the hospital, the victim was told that the snake wasn’t poisonous. But that could’ve just been some medical professional dodging the task of sucking out the venom.

An excellent article in Slate Magazine (“A Brief History of Toilet-Based Animal Attacks”) looked into this phenomenon. Apparently, rats are the most common animals to attack a toilet user. In much the same way a conservative gets to Congress, they crawl hidden from public view through sewage, fighting off the awful stench surrounding them. They travel up the pipes and then wait to feed.

I stopped reading the article at the sentence “Rats are common enough in one Seattle-area sewer system that…” But our city has posted a four-step guide to dispatching a rodent that jumps out of your toilet. Step one is: Stay Calm!

Not gonna happen.

I’ve got a simpler, two-step plan for combating any future attack. First, I’m gonna ditch the new low-flow toilet I recently bought and go back to my old one, where the water pressure unleashed when I hit the flush knob resembled a dam bursting. And secondly, while I’m waiting for it to arrive, I’m gonna use the shower from now on. For everything. It’s got a grill with small holes covering the drain. I used to bitch about all the hair that got stuck there. Not any more.

This begs a simple question. Why can’t a toilet have a flap over the exit pipe that only moves one way (down) when you flush? It seems like a simple fix to what is now my biggest bathroom fear (it just replaced the horror of using a McDonald’s restroom).

I just don’t understand the engineering profession. I really don’t.