A Mining Disaster (Hepper style)

Recently, we bought Caroline this toy:



It's been a big hit with her, although she does require help from Mommy to put each block in its place.
The other night, however, Caroline found a whole new use for her toy: she discovered the coolest little hole that was just the right size for the blocks!



The problem was, that little hole was in our speaker box and once the blocks went down, they wouldn't come out. That night we caught her after two blocks went down the chute and after trying for ten minutes to shake them out, we wrote them off as a lost cause.

But Caroline wasn't about to forget about that neat little hole. This afternoon while I was in the kitchen fixing lunch, it got awfully quiet in the living room. I went in to find Caroline dropping the last of 12 blocks down the chute! Upon further inspection with a flashlight, I also saw that she had dropped a stuffed bunny into the hole for good measure. She seemed quite proud of her "accomplishment."

All of a sudden, I was reminded of the Chilean miners trapped at the bottom of a mine shaft for over 2 months. Of course, this wasn't quite as serious, but I knew I had to find a way to rescue the bunny and the blocks! After a few trial and error attempts, I finally found a method that worked: a bubble of packing tape stuck to the end of Paul's golf club. A NASA designed capsule, it was not, but it would do the trick. With the assistance of a flashlight, I was able to fish all 12 blocks and one stuffed bunny up the shaft and out of the hole.

The rescue team:


The recovered blocks:


Caroline clearly misunderstood the purpose of this rescue mission because she continued to try and drop things into the speaker box. Grr. Eventually, she seemed to understand that I was not pleased with her and went off to find more mischief...