It's a Thanksgiving tradition at my grandparent's house to go around the room and have everyone say one thing that they are thankful for. My youngest brother, John, responded with "family." Little did he know how truly thankful he would be later that day...
My grandparents live on a dairy farm. Visiting them while growing up was a lot of fun because there were always new places to explore and new adventures to go on! Today one of my aunts, a few of my uncles, my siblings, my cousins and I held a scavenger hunt across the farm because it was SO nice outside! We're talking between 50 and 60 degrees F! I can't remember the last time November has been so beautiful :) Anyway, the scavenger hunt ended and as our whole group was heading back to the house, we stopped to climb on the round and square hay bales that were lined up on the yard. The cousins had races up and down the rows of round bales and my brothers decided to climb the stack of square bales. This stack was 12 ft high (4 bales high) and made up of bales wrapped in plastic to protect them from moisture. They were also laid down in alternating directions so that the stack didn't fall over. Well, there were places that weren't packed tightly, so my youngest brother thought it would be cool to take a picture of one of the crevices on his iPod Touch. He didn't get that far....
As the iPod was coming out of his pocket, it caught on the edge of the pocket, flipped out of his hand, and fell 12 feet to the ground in the middle of the stack...literally: 2 bales deep on each side, and 8 rows in from the nearest end. The only way to access the iPod was through the 12 ft deep crack that it fell down. It took an hour to get the thing out! We tried duct tape and cow magnets, but that didn't work. Then we tried sticking it to just duct tape. That didn't work either. At this point, we were still 12 ft. away from the iPod. Well, with nothing working and an iPod to lose, I got the chance to make my brother realize just how thankful he was for family.
The crevice that had swallowed the iPod was slightly wider between the top 2 layers. It was just wide enough for me to slide down to stand on the 2nd layer (3rd from the top). I was squished, to be sure! My brother Troy slid down next to me to help me by holding a flashlight, and his 6'3", 170lbs build was only able to slide down. He couldn't move at all! It was funny. Before the night ended, I had finagled my way lower and lower so that I was laying on my side, one arm pinned behind me and the other under me, in the middle of the stack. I had to take my fall jacket off because I couldn't fit with it on. We ended up finding a plastic pipe that was 6 feet long, wrapping the end in duct tape and sticking it to the iPod. It took several tries, but we finally got it to stick. On the way up, however, we realized that the iPod was too wide the way we had gotten it to fit through the hole that it had fallen through..... After more adjusting on my part, I reached an arm down and grabbed it before it fell again. We returned to the house an hour later than planned, dusty, tired, but overall we were happy with the successful adventure.
Now I just have to figure out how John gets to repay me : ) After all, as my whole family pointed out, I saved him a whole bunch of money today!
So when someone asks me what I did for Thanksgiving, this is going to be one fun story to tell!
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