Weirdest Things Found in Sewers and Drains
At one time, the only things you worried about finding in sewers were alligators, but Roto-Rooter — the international plumbing and drain company — has rescued everything from guns, illegal drugs, GI Joe dolls, live cats, electric razors, currency, coins, snakes, prosthetic eyeballs, iPods and even an unexploded Civil War cannon shell from toilets, drainpipes and trenches over the past several years. Sewers have even served was watery graves for some misfortunates.
Photo Beothuk
The 5 top weird things that go flush from a 2007 survey from the company’s 5,000 field technicians throughout North America include:
1. Hold On to Your Choppers
Rock Hill, South Caroline — in June, a frantic customer told the service technician, “I desperately need your help, I dropped my teeth down there.” Roto-Rooter recovered the man’s dentures intact and in great shape. The man said he intended to use them again — but only after a good cleaning.
2. The Manssierre
Plainfield, Illinois — Like something from a Seinfeld series, a technician went to a commercial business and cabled a toilet in the men’s restroom that was exclusively for male employees. He discovered the cause of the clog was a training bra.
3. Caught with His Pants Down (the Drain)
Toledo, Ohio — On June 6, 2007, Ottawa County Jail personnel attempted to unclog a stubborn toilet block unsuccessfully in one of the jail cells. A Roto-Rooter service technician determined the source of the clog as a pair of orange prisoner pants. The jailbird who would have been released merely 4 days after he clogged his toilet pleaded no contest to criminal mischief and was sentenced to another 30 days.
4. Diamonds — a Girl’s Best Friend
Grand Rapids, Michigan — on December 8, a Roto-Rooter tech used a fiber optic sewer camera and coat hanger taped to a cable to recover a $7,000 diamond engagement ring that was unintentionally flushed down the toilet. The customer complained about the price but his wife hastily intervened and tipped the plumber $20 above his fee.
5. Fresh Air? Not Down There!
Erie, Pennsylvania — December 18th, a Roto-Rooter plumber retrieved a large electric plug-in air freshener caught in the toilet flange that connects the toilet to the drainpipe in the floor which had been flushed down the toilet. The plumber reported that the air freshener proved ineffective against sewer gases coming out of the pipe.
Photo Beothuk
Alligator Myths
Sewer alligator stories were once thought to be an urban legend dating back to the late 1920’s and early 1930’s, based on reports of alligator sightings in rather unorthodox locations, particularly in New York City.
But in 1935, Teddy May, the city’s Superintendent of Sewers, witnessed a large number of alligators — most about 2 feet (61 centimeters) long — to be living within pipes that emptied into the trunk lines below major streets.
Although the story of the ‘Sewer Gator’ in New York City is well known and various versions have been told and built up over the decades, recent reports validate that the stories are much more than urban myth.
A trapper reported an abundance of the reptiles in sewers in Ormond Beach, Florida, as he told WFTV that they were using the sewer to travel through the city after sighting the first one with its tail sticking out from a sewer pipe in October 2005.
Trapper Joe Borelli Jr. tapes the mouth shut of an alligator.
Photo Times / Boyzell Hosey
The St. Petersburg Times reported a 9 foot, 10 inch alligator was found at Lakeshore Mobile Home Park in St. Petersburg in June 2006.
And the Huston Press tells of a 600 pound gator that was so fat it couldn’t spin around in a 3 foot wide drain in Texas, May 2006.
More Bizarre Sewer Objects
Beothuk of Calgary, Alberta in Canada recently compiled a collection mostly from the Edmonton, Alberta Project he was involved in, stating he’s even found bullets at a prison in Saskatchewan.
They looked for drugs that were flushed quite a few times, and a coworker was called in for a murder investigation, checking to see if the wife “disposed of a certain body part.”
Things he found at work which now reside on his dashboard. Photo Beothuk
Pulled out of a line in Edmonton, Alberta, Beothuk said this jaw is about the same
size as a human’s, which scared them a lot when they saw it. Photo Beothuk
Photo Beothuk
Photo Beothuk
Details of a Calgary sewer manhole lid. Photo Beothuk
New York City Sewer Finds
But the best place to see Manhattan’s byproducts — what gets stuffed down its sinks, flushed down its toilets and washed from its gutters — cannot be found in tour guides, but at the Manhattan Grit Chamber, which strains solids from much of the borough’s sewage as it flows underground to the Wards Island Wastewater Treatment Plant.
Manhattan Grit Chamber. Photo NY Times
“This is where it all winds up,” said John Ahern, who oversees the chamber.
Sewage flows by gravity to 1 large main where it’s cleaned of toxins and released as purified water into the river.
To keep the tunnel clear, grit and other solid materials must be strained before the sewage enters. That’s where the chamber comes in.
At the Manhattan chamber, sewage enters through a 12 foot wide main and flows into a basement room. The sediment is collected by an arm that sweeps the bottom of the canal and empties into buckets that automatically rinse the grit and lift it up to the ground floor, where it’s deposited in metal bins.
John Ahern says the list of things he’s seen and seen strained from New Yorkers’ sewage provide enough fodder for a 1-man show.
In a bin of screenings, there were mostly rags, soiled paper towels, condoms, rubber gloves, MetroCards, dental floss and tampon applicators — that and a dead rat. There is no demure way of describing other contents.
“Sometimes you find money.” he said, looking into the bins. “We get a lot of stuffed animals, anything kids throw down the toilet.”
“We get a lot of turtles and fish. We’ve had a canoe come in here; it got caught on the screen. We’ve had pieces of telephone poles, Christmas trees, you name it — mattresses, dead dogs. We got a live dog once.”
And yes, the sewers sometimes become a grave for the unfortunate.
“We’ve had a few dead bodies.” he said. “We got a homeless woman, but it’s mostly men. Once we had a guy who was shot. The last one we had was a homeless guy, a few years ago in the Bronx. They go into the manholes to look for jewelry and money, and then they get overcome with gas, go unconscious and die down there.”
Watery Graves
And New York isn’t the only city with sludge-filled watery graves for the misfortunate.
A woman in Germany put an end to her troubled marriage by chopping up her husband and flushing parts of him down the toilet, authorities in Brisbane said on January 9 2008.
“You won’t find him, I’ve flushed him down the toilet’, is what she told [her children],” said Andre Hartwich, a spokesman for police in the western city of Duesseldorf.
The children, who reported their father missing before Christmas, told police the marriage was “steeped in hatred.”
The woman had previously attempted to poison her husband, and on one occasion she had seriously injured him with a hammer. Police were shocked that the long-suffering husband had never reported these incidents.
On the night that the man was last seen, neighbors reported hearing the toilet being constantly flushed. Police are working on the assumption that the woman had chopped up her husband’s body into small pieces, disposing of some in garbage bins and flushing the rest of the body down the toilet.
Police forensic experts were able to detect traces of blood in the living room, hall and bathroom.
Sources: VN Boards, NY Times, Brisbane Times, Spero News and Wikipedia
[...] Weirdest Things Found In Sewers And Drains @ Life In The Fast Lane [...]
I never found the weird blog and photo like yours before…….outstanding and interest mindset
That jawbone isn’t even close to being human, looks like it belongs to a deer.
There are some bizarre things going into the sewer!
I can kind of understand some things like the rings since people take them off to wash their hands sometimes. But the jaw bone?
I can even understand the toys, kids put stuff in weird places.
As for the bra in the mens room, well that would have been entertaining to watch!
I will be very careful next time when I walk near a drain. Grr…
I can see how toys would go down the drain… just because kids can be quite weird about their toys. But the jaw bone is a bit creepy! Although, it doesn’t really look like a human jaw-bone to me, more like a dog’s jaw-bone.
Funny post about things that are found in sewers. I know that I lost a few toys down the rain-gutter in my neighborhood, so I can only imagine the things that are found.
So did they ever figure out what kind of jawbone it was?
Once again, an astonishing post! It’s scary actually!
So weird! How difficult there job is.. but also quiet challenging..
Deborah,
“Enough items to fill a one man show”, but wouldn’t that be all toilet humor?
I could imagine the smell while reading your post. It makes you realize that a lot of people need toilet training.:-)
I have a lot of admiration for the people who do this kind of work. It’s a crappy job in a place that’s full of shit!
— Durano, done!
dont click that “spymac.com” link ….unless you want a trojan
Thanks Luukmuu
Michael, I’m with you, the jawbone looks something more like belonging to an animal rather than human.
Hehe, didn’t mean to create a fear for you Mig
I’ve lost things down rain gutters as a kid myself, DoFollow, so it stands to reason that there are much stranger things than we’re really aware in sewers.
Thanks Kuanyin
I think the odds of something to be feared of coming at you from sewers and drains are quite remote.
Shudder to think of what it must be like to have a job working sewers, Martin.
Hehehe, good one Durano
No doubt, they certainnly deserve respect.
Thanks PauPer. That person keeps leaving those spam links under various names for the past few days. They’ll soon learn it’s a futile effort. Gotta love that Spam button
A woman in Germany put an end to her troubled marriage by chopping up her husband and flushing parts of him down the toilet, authorities in Brisbane said on January 9 2008.
“You won’t find him, I’ve flushed him down the toilet’, is what she told [her children],” said Andre Hartwich, a spokesman for police in the western city of Duesseldorf.
WHAT A SEWAGE SYSTEM!
You put one guy in in Germany and he comes out in Australia (Brisbane)
)) …Way to go, so to speak.
What do authorities in Brisbane have to do with a murder in Germany???
i once heard that condoms were like the top items u find in sewers …
dunno if its true …
The jawbone looks just like that of a male llama, right number of molars and fighting teeth in front of them. How in the world it got down the sewer is a whole ‘nother story.
Hehe, not exactly, Iowa
Geo, the woman was from Macedonia and fled back there after the killing. German authorities were attempting to have her extradited.
Subcorpus, I did read that comdoms are commonly found at a number of sites.
True Wild Bill, I’m sure it’s a jaw bone belonging to some kind of animal.
[...] Weirdest Things Found in Sewers and Drains … es even found bullets at a prison in Saskatchewan…. [...]
Indeed some of the things you have mentioned are the most weirdest things i have come across in a sewer.
Wow..nice to see my photos showed up somewhere. I’m glad that someone has taken an interest in our line of work. There are Sewer companies all over, and when employees run into each other we love to swap stories too.
The Jaw bone is probably a pig, but it really scared the crap out of me when I saw it. I’ve been sent on missions to find all sorts of weird things out there. I keep a collection of them in my work truck, and have taken alot home as momentos.
I certainly have to hand it to you for being so committed to your line of work, Beothuk. I’d love to hear some of the stories you’ve swapped, no doubt you have plenty more interesting tales to tell
No doubt that would have been chilling to find a jaw bone in your daily routine of work! No matter what the creature, you can’t help but pause to wonder how it ended up down there.
Yeah, I would definitely say that that is a deer jawbone.
Possibly, and if that’s the case, the question would be how it actually got there.
Oh my god! How can this be possible? I can see that people these days will throw all most anything down there. If the garbage is full why don`t they use the toilet right? Someone should teach those people some good common sense.
Common sense is often all it needs, Narconan
It’s amazing what some will try to flush down a toilet.
people really throw those things in the toilet?
Yes Gina, apparently some do.
I grew up in the country – can’t flush anything you don’t want down the toilet when you’re on a septic system!
wow that some weird stuff! I can imagine a few of those like toys, rings, but jaw bones and pants?!
Ah well each to his own :p
you call these odd you should come to my country sometime because these things are normal here. We find dead bodies and rotten bodies and what not the in the sewers.
It doesn’t sound like the kind of place I would enjoy visit after hearing that, Sonix
No idea how I found your blog, but I know I’ll be here more often!
“Sometimes you find money.” I’m guessing that would go as an advantage of working in the sewers.
Great to hear that you enjoy it Rajaei
Very weird.What pictures.Very difficult to do that job.I am very lazy and I will not be able to do that job.It is very hard for me to do that.I think I will not be able to do that kind of work in future also.
That image of the leg torn apart was quite good. I faved your blog hope you post more of such wierdo things.
Wouldn’t like to come face to face with one of those sewer alligators. Agree that the photo of the jaw doesn’t look human. If it is from a human I wouldn’t want to come face to face with that person either lol.
wow, those sewer alligators are unreal.
I really not surprised about rats, guns, even dead bodies but electric razors. I don’t understand how a electric razor would end up in the sewer. It’s really surprising what ends up in a dark corner. I’m really surprise that alligators were living in the sewer. The 5 top weird things that go flush was a really funny real life list.
Ewww thats just gross! Maybe thats my mates razor ^^
WOW!!! thats crazy stuff… that jaw is pretty scary.
very interesting post. i like it very much
Very original post and I agree with Michael Neal this jawbone looks like it belongs to a deer. very weird !!
I thought those were silver teeth for a moment! But I would expect to find toys, jewelery, animal remains and of course, excrement
That person keeps leaving those spam links under various names for the past few days. They’ll soon learn it’s a futile effort.
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Awesome article! I have gradually become fan of your article and would like to suggest putting some new updates to make it more effective.
If you think about it the sewer system of a major city should be a source of all sorts of interesting objects and paraphenalia. All those tributaries all coming to one place. Whatever the joys down there, I think I would rather keep my hands clean though!
baby gender predictor’s last blog post..Baby Gender Predictor – Introducing Ultrasound
That seems to be very old!
Here is a strange creature that was found in a sewer!
http://www.playusout.com/detailed.php?recordID=929
My daughter dropped a pair of tweezers down the drain. For some reason she liked to pull her leg hairs out… ah well strange kid. Anyway got the toilet all clogged up. Thank goodness for drain snakes.
.-= charles´s last blog ..Love it! =-.
bra!!!!!!!!!!!IN THE MENS ROOM!COULDENT BELIVE THAT I WAS LAUGHING MY HEAD OFF!!!!!!!!!
