Is a snake clogging your toilet??

Last week, one San Diego resident discovered a very unwelcome surprise in her toilet: a boa constrictor.

At work, the woman first realized that her toilet was clogged. After plunging it, the water started to return to its normal levels. However, a little while later, she returned to the bathroom only to discover that a 5-foot snake was slithering out of the bowl! Apparently another tenant in the building owned the snake, which got away and snuck into the pipes.

We’ve seen a lot of unusual causes for clogged toilets across all of our city’s neighborhoods, but a boa constrictor might take the cake. It’s a rare incident, but that doesn’t mean that your toilet is immune from clogs, no matter how strange the cause.

Here’s a list of crazy clogs, from most to least likely (although most are possible).

Toilet paper

Most clogs are caused by bunched up toilet paper. In excess, it can keep water from properly flowing, and stop up the toilet altogether. Usually the best way to handle this is with a common plunger. Bell-shaped plungers work well, as do plungers with a flange. Give it a few pumps, and that should release the paper.

Trash

It might sound strange, but people are still throwing trash into the toilet in 2015 (what they have against garbage cans we’ll never know). Toilet bowl drains aren’t built to handle more than paper products – lightweight paper products at that. If you accidentally throw a small amount of trash into the toilet, a plunger will most likely help. However, if you are met with resistance, don’t push it. You don’t want an overflow on your hands. Instead, call a plumber.

Kids’ toys

Kids do the darndest things, don’t they? Usually they’re cute and make you feel all warm and fuzzy… except when they’re clogging your toilet. Yes, us plumbers often find action figures, dolls and even stuffed animals jammed in people’s toilets. If you think your adorable child has dropped or purposely sent a toy down the drain, call the plumber that San Diego trusts most to retrieve it. Boyd Rogers will use more advanced techniques to get the toy back and free up your toilet once again, whether you live in The Gaslamp Quarter or near Qualcomm Stadium.

Cell phone

We have no real way to prove it, but anecdotal evidence suggests that replaced cell phones for wallets when it comes to the contents of our back pockets. How do we know? We base our informal hypothesis on the number of cell phones that we pull out of toilets. Yes, it seems that phones tend to slide out of your pockets when we go to sit down (more so than wallets ever did, apparently). While this can create a headache of a clog, it also is a sure-fire way to kill your phone.

An alligator

Okay, we’ve never actually seen this, but based on the 1980 movie, Alligator in which the titular reptile is flushed down the toilet only to grow to mutant size and attack a city, this is entirely possible. Plus, if it happened to a snake, why not an alligator?

The moral to this whole story is that San Diego residents should keep their pet reptiles safely away from the toilet.