Creative Fishing | By Katie
Back over the summer, we hosted a week long Summer "Camp" for Sefton and Naomi. They came over to Wenatchee for a full week packed full of activities, crafts and snacks.
With the snacks, my brother brought over enough snacks and candy that we were well stocked the entire week. He brought a bag of "nerds gummies" which are a fairly new candy product that has become popular. They are small gummy balls that are coated in nerds. A fruity sugary concoction that is truly for those with a sweet tooth. He would dole them out to the kids after meals to make sure they weren't devoured by the kids. After he handed some out, he left them on the counter, and the demands for more began. In effort to "hide" the bag he went to place it on top of some tall cupboards in our sitting area, not knowing that the portion he went to set the bag, was in fact hollow. The bag slid along the wall and the cupboard behind a hidden wall with a "thud". He tried climbing up on a stool to look, and realized there was no getting this bag of candy back.
We had a good laugh, and since then it's become something I remember is there from time to time.
Recently as Thom was finishing up some electrical/cable hiding for our living room entertainment, he was putting away his cable fishing wire used to drag wires through walls. I grabbed the cable and climbed up to attempt to retrieve the bag of nerds clusters.
A sidetone that this is not the first bag of candy we have fished out of this pocket. When we moved in and painted above these cabinets, there was a 10lb bag of candy discovered, we used the same cable to "hook" a corner of the plastic bag and pull it up. It was old and brittle, the bag fell once knocking a few pieces of candy out of the opening someone has made. We did succeed and subsequently throw the 6-ish year old bag of candy into the trash.
The bag of nerds clusters was standing straight up and a zip-closing tapered bag, meaning I had nothing I could "hook" onto with the cable. What we really needed was a grabber, but the cupboards being so tall, there was no way I could use anything to close or open any sort of clasp. Which is where I then came up with the idea of hooking a mouse trap onto the end of the cable. The idea being that I could lower the trap down and use the bag itself to release the trap, and the gate would swing around the top of the bag, thus grabbing on so I could lift it out.
The first go I nearly got it! However I didn't get enough of the bag, so it fell back down. The second attempt I moved too quickly and snapped the release against the wall lowering the trap down. Thom gave me one more attempt before he was tired of watching my determination. The third try (the charm!) I slowly lowered the cable down, mouse trap dangling, wood side against the outside of the cabinet, then with NASA like precision, I moved the cable to push the mouse traps release along the top of the bag of candy, when it snapped shut. I pulled up, the bag coming with it. Slowly I brought up the cable and alas! I successfully retrieved the bag from the hollow!
All in a good days of work.
