It was a dark and stormy night. A shout rang out, "My bed is wet!"
This is not what you want to hear at 10:30 pm, when you are just getting to bed.
Upon investigation, the bottom bunk, and only the bottom bunk, was soaking wet. Not a leak in the roof, then. The child in question was just getting into bed (very, very late). Not a leak in a kid, then.
A shocking discovery: the fish tank next to the bed is disconnected and empty!! No, not quite empty, both fish are miraculously alive in about half an inch of water on the bottom.
Conclusion: Choclo is in serious trouble.
But... how could he possibly have done it? The tank itself would have been too heavy for him to tip over, and, even if he had managed it, he would not have righted it. Besides, the space between the fish tank and the bed was dry.
We gave up, put Mxyl in the recently cleaned guest room, refilled the fish tank, and went to bed puzzled.
The next morning, we resumed our investigation. Choclo, upon close questioning, yielded a clue. "The fish tank was bad! The fish tank splashed me again and again!"
Leena added another clue, "Choclo told me [in a clandestine, illegal, after bedtime conversation] he was wet, and I felt him, and he was."
Mxyl put it all together. Choclo had crept out of the top bunk into the lower bunk, disconnected the air tube, and sucked on it. This created a siphon effect, causing a gallon and a half of water to spurt out all over him (and the bed)! Bad fish tank indeed.
Case closed!
Anyone know how to dry out a mattress?
3 comments:
ROFLOL! What a great practical physics lesson. ;-)
Don't know what to do for the mattress, except for propping it up and setting up a lot of fans.
New commenter here! I've been enjoying your blog for several months now but never had reason to comment. I just had some couch cushions that I doused heavy with vinegar water to clean them after a bout of kid illness (I'll leave that to your imagination) and my husband propped them in front of the fireplace with the blower on. They were toasty dry in no time. In the interest of getting a mattress dry quickly (so nothing new starts to grow) I would drag it to the fireplace or put an electric fan with heat in front of it. A gallon and a half is no small amount! Good luck!
Fortunately, a lot of it drained down into Myxl's clothes, which are in the underbed boxes. It was easy to put the clothes in the dryer, of course! The mattress actually dried out with just the ceiling fan in the room on. Thanks much for the advice, though!
Would you believe that the week before, I'd gone to Target to get a new waterproof mattress cover for THAT BED? But then, I saw the black bookcases and forgot what I'd actually gone there for. Not sure how much it would have helped with one and a half gallons, though.
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