Does anyone want an alligator? It’s probably going to be mostly clean.

in Random Crap

All week I’ve been hearing this awful noise that sounds like the hurk-hurk-bork of a cat throwing up, and so I’d run through the house to find the guilty kitty so I could put him on tile rather than have him throw up on the harder-to-clean carpet, but each time I’d find all of the cats in the hall, just staring at me like they were totally innocent and wondering why I’d interrupted their meeting.  And then I finally was like, “Fuck this, cats.  I’m just gonna stand here until one of you fuckers tries it again.  I’VE GOT ALL DAY.”   But then they just looked at me, because turns out they have all day too.

And then I heard it again and turns out it wasn’t the cats.  

It was the toilet.

The toilet was gurgling and making noises like a cat vomiting, and I thought that seemed odd because toilets don’t vomit and are more likely vomited into, but that noise was definitely coming from the toilet and that’s when I realized that my toilet is probably haunted.

Seriously.  I can hear it even now.  It’s like the ghost of someone who ate a bad burrito is in there.  Or maybe it’s the spirit of a long-dead dog who is drinking from the toilet,  Frankly, I have no idea how to handle this and I don’t know whether to call a plumber or an exorcist.

I tried to research it and google was like, “Way ahead of you.  Here’s what other people are searching for:”

hauntd toilet

Conclusion:  Toilet poltergeist are fucking everywhere.

It’s getting louder and now I’m officially scared of the toilet.  I’ve just regressed back to age 3.  Awesome.  I blame the toilet.

I told Victor we need to call an old priest and a young priest and he said I was being ridiculous and that “it’s probably  just air in the lines”, which is just as scary as toilet ghosts because if there’s air in the lines that means that toilet snakes and sewer alligators now have the oxygen necessary to crawl up our toilet pipes without drowning.  So now I can’t sit on the toilet without first screaming and kicking the toilet a few times to scare off any snakes that might be near the surface, which is going to be difficult to explain when we have company over.  Thanks a lot, Victor.  

Victor said that if it kept happening he’d call a plumber to “snake the lines” and I just stared at him because that’s the exact opposite of what I want.  If anything I want someone to de-snake the lines.  Then Victor explained that “snaking the lines” doesn’t have anything to do with real snakes but after this summer’s “We need to expand the fire-pipes under your house” confusion I just don’t trust anything.  I’m considering changing out the toilets for small buckets, and now I know why everyone used chamber pots in the Victorian ages.  It was probably because of all the alligators.

These are the things they never cover on the History Channel.

166 thoughts on “Does anyone want an alligator? It’s probably going to be mostly clean.”

Read comments below or add one.

  1. I’m sorry, but the thought of you doing your business and getting bit on the behind by an alligator makes me giggle.

    p.s. I’ll totally take that toilet alligator off your hands.

  2. I’m with Victor on this one—get a plumber. In my experience, “talking” toilets are never good and frequently expensive!

  4. If this toilets a rocking, don’t come a knocking. Wait, how does that go again?

  6. I still don’t see the problem with fire pipes. What a great way to break the ice at parties.

  7. You think one snake in one toilet is bad. Check this out – a family has removed 310 snakes from their basement in the past couple of months. I WOULD DIE.

    http://www.mysask.com/portal/site/main/template.MAXIMIZE/home/?javax.portlet.tpst=635b2ff202604ea181fa421740315ae8_ws_MX&javax.portlet.prp_635b2ff202604ea181fa421740315ae8_viewID=story&javax.portlet.prp_635b2ff202604ea181fa421740315ae8_topic_display_name=Saskatchewan%20News&javax.portlet.prp_635b2ff202604ea181fa421740315ae8_WT.cg_s=Saskatchewan&javax.portlet.prp_635b2ff202604ea181fa421740315ae8_WT.cg_n=News&javax.portlet.prp_635b2ff202604ea181fa421740315ae8_topic_name=Saskatchewan&javax.portlet.prp_635b2ff202604ea181fa421740315ae8_news_item_id_key=30872373&javax.portlet.begCacheTok=com.vignette.cachetoken&javax.portlet.endCacheTok=com.vignette.cachetoken

  8. When I was in Russia my girlfriend and her husband had a rat that lived in their toilet. That used to have to shove a plastic Pepsi bottle cut in half into the hole at the bottom so the rat wouldn’t come up while they did their business. Suddenly air in the lines doesn’t seem like such a problem does it? 🙂

    (YOU ARE MAKING IT WORSE. ~ Jenny)

  10. At least if there are snakes in your toilet, they might eat the ghost. Or the other way round, if it’s a small snake but a large ghost dog.

  12. lol.. usually it’s because there’s either a clog and snaking or de-snaking will do the work or it’s because it’s not properly vented which causes suction when the toilet flushes. Often builders will include the venting to the sink(s) with the toilet and it may not provide enough venting to stop the suction. There was an Ask This Old House segment about this if you need more info 🙂

  14. I have tears in my eyes from laughing at this! Thanks for a much needed laugh. My last apartment had air in the pipes that made a knocking sound at random intervals. I didn’t realize it at first and thought it was my neighbors knocking on the walls as if I was making too much noise! So of course, I knocked back. Neighbors probably thought I was nuts.

  16. My toilets used to do that because roots in the pipes were bollocking the works. I wish it had been an alligator, then I could have lured it out with fish or something. Instead we paid a plumber 8 hojillion dollars to replace the sewer line because it was so full of roots it looked like we had tried to flush a terrier.

    (But…I only have 3 hojillion dollars. ~ Jenny)

  18. This is why I always check before I sit down. Sometimes twice. I had a squirrel once in the closet, so I always check that too.

  19. “I’d run through the house to find the guilty kitty so I could put him on tile rather than have him throw up on the harder-to-clean carpet” – the story of my miserable life. And you may want to avoid Stephen King’s IT if you are having toilet issues. shudder

  23. Alligators in your toilet? How about a tree branch growing out of your toilet? True story. A friend of mine couldn’t use her toilet for 4 months because it was backing up all the time and her bathroom was flooded. The landlord finally sent a plumber who found a tree branch growing up and out of the toilet… and then it took the landlord another few months to fix the issue. Pushy, those trees!

    But definitely snake-out that hissing, spitting venomous toilet of yours! And post pictures!

  25. A couple of years ago, my toilet make a sound like a Viking blowing a horn. Creeped the hell out of me. It did stop. I don’t remember how we got it to stop. I am just glad it did.
    On another note: What the hell is a Fire-pipe?! Why would you put ‘Fire’ anything in (or under) your house?!?!
    Signed – The Confused Duckie

  26. I am reading this at work (which I shouldn’t be) and am laughing my head off! What you need is an old priest, a young priest, a plumber, and a gastroenterologist! Better safe than sorry!

  28. Laurie, I think, might be on to something. If the vent is drawing through a smaller orifice due to blockage, then it could be the origin of the sounds. So, check the vent. It might not be aligators but it could be birds. Hey, they both lay eggs, right?

  30. We have a similar problem and while I had considered calling a plumber, I hadn’t thought of an exorcist. But it makes sense. Thanks, Jenny. You’ve probably saved my family a lot on plumbing bills. I just hope I can find a well-qualified exorcist. That’s not always easy.

  31. It could be those little plastic green army men. My brother sentenced about 300 of them to ‘death by whirlpool’

  32. My husband always rolls his eyes and dont want to hear anything to do with Blogs. I just read this article out loud and he laughed his ass off!! Win!!! TY for that 🙂

  33. Buckets are awesome. But kegger cups work well, too. Just make sure you have a stack of them and aren’t a regular Mountain Dew drinker.

  34. Here is a less-scary toilet-noise story…when he was younger, my brother decided to dump an entire bottle of shampoo (like Sam’s Club economy size b/c my mom bought in bulk of course) down the shower drain in our upstairs basement. Because he liked all the bubbles (and really, who doesn’t like bubbles???). Well, we had a bathroom in the basement, and for some reason when the ejector pump tried to push all that bubbly water that came from the upstairs shower, out to the city sewer line, it got backed up and just made more bubbles. I was down in the basement rec room at the time, and heard this noise coming from the basement bathroom, that sounded like something drowning in the toilet. I went to check it out & there were bubbles coming out of the toilet, shower and sink. Sorry it took so long to tie the toilet noise to this story, but it was worth waiting for, right? Cause instead of alligators now you’re thinking of bubbles. Or maybe you’re thinking of alligators now again since I mentioned it. Sorry ’bout that. It’s friday. I’m off work in 30 minutes and my brain is foggy.

  35. I was just about to ask why two priests (one old, one young), then I realized it’s probably a reference to The Exorcist movie? Did I get it? I don’t think I ever watched the whole movie. I’m sure it couldn’t be because movies like that scare the bejesus out of me. But anyway, good luck with your haunted toilet. 🙂

    (You got it. ~ Jenny)

  37. I just thought of something else – Could your haunted doll house be coming alive, starting with the toilet? Ohh.. that would make for a good scary movie plot. Too bad I would never watch it.

  38. One time our toilet started making noises like that. Turns out there was a shit ton (see what I did there) of wipes stuck in the pipes between the street and the bowl. We had to undo the connections along the pipes in the basement until we found the clog, all the while draining shit water into huge tubes. good times. good times.

  39. @TheBloggess how weird, all my water pressure suddenly stopped.

    Good news, the whole studio villages waters off. Plumber did it.
    But u gotta admit how bazaar my water went out at the same time as you.
    So call off your poltergeist

  41. I’ve seen alligators.
    I’ve seen ghosts.
    But I’ve never seen an alligators ghost.
    That might be cool.
    I’m coming to your house.

  42. holy shitballs!!!! sounds like you need a handful of cherry bombs and a good lighter to fix that problem…… but don’t tell Victor…

  45. Don’t be silly. Toilet snakes and sewer alligators aren’t real. It is probably the piranaraptors… They are basically piranhas with a raptor tail and very pointy claws. So you have absolutely nothing to worry about unless you urinate in the toilet. They are attracted to the smell of urine. So as long as you never go in or near the toilet you should be perfectly safe.

  47. Gina W. you are very routine about your Russian threesome and sewer rats.
    Industrial toilet can projectile vomit. I don’t want to go through that again.

  49. Didn’t Dean and Sam cover something like this in Season 8 of Supernatural? Might be a portal from Purgatory. You should totally have the Winchesters check it out. Way better than priests IMO.

  50. My dunny (Australian for toilet) is like that too. It freaks me out at night. I have my CPAP mask on and then the funny noises start.

  51. I stayed in an inn where the owner told me about a giant frog that they kept flushing down the toilet in my unit, because it kept returning. I needed one of these: http://www.freshette.com/

    I have one now, and the only problem is I can’t write my name in the snow. Yet.

  52. Jenny – are you on a septic system? Because when my toilet started making those noises (and I ignored them, hoping they’d go away), very bad things happened. Very bad. As in back up of the septic system into the house type of things. Makes one wish for alligators. Those noises mean the pipes are clogged somewhere in the system. Call a plumber or someone who is willing to muck around in the plumbing to clear the clog. I hate plumbing issues.

  53. when I was a kid, my mom explained to me, as she went potty in an outhouse, that she was scared of outhouses because when she was a kid someone told her a story of a cougar that got stuck in the hole beneath an outhouse and took a swat at some poor unsuspecting soul’s bottom. She seemed to be in complete denial of the fact that she was most certainly passing this fear onto me by doing the exact same thing (thanks mom). Cougars. Alligators. Clearly plumbing has done little for us.

  54. You sure it isn’t just a toilet draugr? I used to be terrified of those nasty little buggers as a kid, and my aunt used to too. Now a days my family asks if you’ve been taken by the toilet draugr if you’re taking too long… Mainly it is only supposed to pull children into the toilet, but you never know if they have evolved since I was a kid. There are also stories of a Sewer King and a Septic Tank gnome. Gotta love Norway! 😀

  55. When I lived in the desert in So. Calif., we once found a 14″ alligator lizard curled around in the toilet bowl. Needless to say, I ALWAYS look before I sit.

  56. My wife keeps complaining that we need an upstairs bathroom. I’m going to show her your post so she can see that it’s just not worth the risk.

  58. Jenny, I don’t know how you’ve done it but your blog always has the FUNNIEST comments. Every blog is a goldmine. I have found that a sledgehammer usually solves most things.

  60. My cats like to drink from the toilet, so my first thought would probably be that one of them slipped and fell in!

    You guys have had me laughing so hard! Love you all!!

  61. When I was growing up my aunt told he there was a snake that lived in the U bend of the toilet and ate my poop. Somehow this turned into a satanic demon over the years of childhood and it got to the point where I would flush the toilet as quickly as humanly possibly and then go careening down the hall to escape the demon before materialized.
    This lasted until I was about seventeen.
    Nine years later, my toilet gurgled at me and all I could think is OH GOD THE DEMON FOUND ME as I threw myself from the room.

  62. Unholy haunted shitballs!
    Rats residing in toilets. Alligators, pooptergeists? I’m surprised any of us managed to be toilet trained before 12 years old, or old enough to wield a slingshot or bb gun with any kind of accuracy.

  67. I’m so seriously freaked by the thought of creatures in my toilets that I make sure the seat and lid are down unless someone’s conducting business. My dad once found a rather large bullfrog in his toilet. He went in, came right back out and told us that there was a frog on the throne. We were like, “Uh-huh.” So, my sister and I went to check it out and sure enough, there he was, just hanging out on the inside of the bowl. We screamed like little girls (naturally). My dad took a plastic grocery bag, grabbed the frog and deposited him back outside (AWAY from the house). I also have known someone that found a snake in her bathroom (left that toilet lid up!) and another that had a couple scorpions fall out of an air vent in hers. I have yet to find anything that’s not supposed to be in there in my toilet, but I ain’t taking any chances!

  68. Did you ever watch that movie The Ghoulies? I was scared to use the toilet FOR YEARS! I still try not to think about it. So. Thanks.

  69. Have you asked your youngest what she flushed down the toilet (or I guess did not fully flush down the toilet)?

  70. Didn’t the Victorians empty their chamber pots out the window onto the street and onto unsuspecting passers-by? So is a choking gagging toilet better than a screaming ranting pedestrian?

  73. I was really sick this week…I think it might be my fault I was sick enough to infect all toilets between Ohio and Texas. Sorry.

  74. I don’t know what you’re complaining about. We have them too. It’s no big deal. Geez, quit yer complainin’/ pull down your big girl panties and go in the litter box like a grown up.

  76. It might not be that serious. Our toilet was acting bad, never when my husband was around. So I just looked crazy yelling, hear that? HEAR IT! Its doing it again!”. The mystery was solved when a man from.the city knocked on our door. Our toilet tank had a crack, and was leaking water. When it got the bowl full enough, the toilet would make an unforgettable noise as it sort of flushed itself. We were using hundreds of gallons of water a day with this hidden crack. Which is why the city knocked on our door, when our water usage went up 120%. U rule it out easily and its practically free. Put some food coloring in the water tank. Red is fun, but warn Victor first. Or don’t. The only hard part is this: don’t flush or let anyone flush for 15 min. If at anytime you see color in the toilet bowl water, without flushing first, then you know the problem. Leaky toilet. Its a lot cheaper than a Plummer call and snaking the pipes. Or two exorcists.

    Good luck!

  77. Snakes can happen. One lady in my hometown (Shreveport, La) got up in the middle of the night and heard a noise. Looked over at the toilet and there was a motherfucking rattlesnake. She slammed the lid and called the cops. It made the papers and for years afterward, I was paranoid about toilet rattlers.

  78. I once lived in a sh*tty house with a toilet that filled with hot water. While it was nice having a warm seat the whole spa treatment of steaming the pores of the buttocks was well…odd. (Apparently the pipes were too close to the hot water lines and would heat the water.)

    Potty problems suck ass.

    That is all.

  79. Speaking of cat vomit, we used to have a cat that would start making the horking noise in the kitchen (vinyl flooring), then run into the dining room to vomit on the Chinese rug my husband bought in Hong Kong. Cat did this every frickin’ time he needed to empty his belly. Thanks, cat.

  81. OMG…laughing SO HARD and trying to read it to my husband who is just staring at me like I’ve lost my mind. Thank you, Jenny.

  82. I totally understand. We live in a travel trailer, and one of the best things is the manual flush, which means there’s a cover at the bottom that only slides open when you pull the lever. No snakes can get in! It’s a little sad how comforting this is to me.

  84. My ex husband always got mad when I got up at night to use the bathroom because I’d always turn on all the bathroom lights. One, I had to make sure Bloody Mary wasn’t going to show up, and two, I had to check the toilet for snakes or other creepy crawlies but mostly snakes.

  86. I won’t tell you then about the time we went to stay in a relative’s condo in Florida and found a glass end table top on the toilet seat and a gallon of bleach sitting on the glass. I also won’t tell you it’s because they were up north for a few months and the toilet water evaporated and rats crawled up and infested the condo. They had the whole place gutted and redone before we stayed there and hired a neighbor to flush the toilets every day when they are away. The glass was just for extra protection. I will tell you that I kicked that toilet and screamed to scare the possible rats away every time I had to go.

  87. Last week a lady I work with heard a noise in the bathroom in the middle of the night. When she went to check on it, there was a FREAKING MUSKRAT running around in the bathroom. When she came back with rubber boots and a broom the muskrat jumped back in the toilet and disappeared. She called her sister who is a wildlife biologist and she says it happens all the time. Eeeeeeek!

  88. OMG I am so glad I live in a country that has neither snakes nor alligators. I have found a huge rat in the toilet bowl once. Head upwards, coming out of the pipe, but drowned just an inch before breaking the surface and precious oxygen. Anyway, that totally freaked me out so I check all the time too. Don’t want no weird ass critter taking a bite of my unprotected girly bits!

  89. I don’t want to freak you out, but close the lid, put something heavy on it, and call critter control. I had the same experience one night after a dinner party. Everyone had just left and I was walking by the bathroom to head to bed and I heard a gurgling – I thought one of my guests had backed up the toilet and went to look – there was a huge RAT looking up at me whiskers twitching and all. When I called critter control they said, “just flush and flush and flush again – it happens all the time – the rats come up the sewer lines – if, after 10 flushes, it is still there, we will come get it.” I never sat on a toilet in that house again without checking – but the ultimate revenge is that my in-laws now live in that house and I never told them……what a surprise they may have one day!!

  90. I think water lines are usually empty and not filled with water….only the traps (u bends) are filled with water all the time. I am not a plumber but I read this once, noting that all sorts of creepy critters can navigate the empty pipes…even basilisks at Hogwarts.

  91. It’s zombie snakegators….you have heard that alligators and snakes have cross bred in the sewers to make the most horrific sewer monster.

  92. This happened to me recently (not the alligator or haunting) the talking toilet. 1800 bucks later (who knew poop paid so well?) it was partially clogged lines. The worst part was when Plumber meanie called me to show me the view of the camera they stuck down there (which really is reality TV at its worst and completely uncalled for – a simple verbal it’s clogged would’ve sufficed). Take my advice and let Victor deal with this one lest you behold what I have. It’s burned into my corneas, and I will never be the same again. I WISH I had seen an alligator on the other end of the live feed. /Shudder At least I could’ve named it something clever, coordinated rescue efforts or a telethon, and had a better end to this post.

  93. We solved the problem of cats vomiting on the carpet by getting a dog. He makes sure to get to any and all cat barf long before we can find it and/or step in it.

    This has no repercussions if you don’t think about it too hard.

    I’ve never, on the other hand, had a haunted toilet. We do have one that needs replacing, but the only bad thing that comes up out of that is, um, sewer roaches. (You live in Texas, it’s about the same as Arizona, so I’m sure you understand what those are.) The cats tend to kill and eat those. Again, don’t think about that too hard.

  94. I used to live in New York City and then New Orleans and – now I’m in Houston. Needless to say I ALWAYS put the light on and lift the toilet seat to check and see if some ginormous roach isn’t using my toilet as it’s own jacuzzi.

  95. When I was little, I was convinced that a vampire lived in my toilet. If I had to go teetee at night, I had to be back in bed under the covers before it finished flushing or he would fly down the hall and get me. I had to time it just right. Thankfully I survived.

  96. Sewer roaches? Now I’m gonna need a ginormous search light to inspect my potty each and every time I go, day or night. Thanks, people.

  98. Ah, that old game of cat-vomit roulette. Where your choices are to grab the cat and move it to a tiled area/outside where the vomit is easier to clean/nature’s problem, or to grab the cat and enable it to provide a steady stream of vomit between the starting place and the place where you give up, or to try to grab the cat and have it run around the house vomiting in inaccessible places, or to just wait resignedly until it has finished vomiting where it started and then clean it up because at least you know where the vomit is and it is in only one spot.

    I believe this might be what our grandparents referred to as “Making our own entertainment.”

  99. I wanted to see what your toilet googling brought up but I somehow found this and thought you would enjoy it even more…..Google ” Exploding Head Syndrome”. Have a nice day

  101. Ok. I would take this situation very seriously if I were you. I mean, think about it. You’re a ghost and of all the things you could haunt, you pick a toilet. Yeah, that’s one bad ass ghost. A real sicko. Call the priest. Or do it yourself. http://www.catholicdoors.com/prayers/latin/latin040.htm I found the Latin version – way more dramatic and probably works better. At the end, pour a lot of holy water into the toilet and flush three times. (That last part is my own but you can use it.)

  102. My toilet will do that, too!! Sometimes, it just flushes on its own while I’m in the living room…. not too long ago, my landlady died and every now and again my dog just stares into my bathtub.

    Conclusion: My dead landlady is haunting my bathroom.

  103. So my downstairs toilet occasionally vomits large quantities of water out of the bowl. Like literally, I come home from work, open the door to the bathroom, and my teeny tiny half bathroom is soaked – floor, walls, etc. The fuck????
    It happens every time the water company is doing something with the water lines in my neighborhood. Their explanation is that my plumbing system has some sort of ventilation pipe to let gases vent out from the plumbing system, and it must be clogged (which of course is my responsibility, not theirs, blah blah blah), so when they are out on the street fucking around and increasing the pressure in the water lines, that pressure pushes water out of my toilet.
    Just an fyi for those of you who have ever come home and found, mysteriously, copious amounts of toilet water all over your bathroom. It’s not your cats or kids or resident poltergeists fucking with you.

    #themoreyouknow

  107. True story: Once I went into the basement bathroom and found water all over the floor and an empty toilet bowl. It wasn’t a leak. My dad told me that sometimes the city blows air in the lines. They should warn people first. If that had happened while I was using said toilet, it would have been like the worst bidet ever.

  108. A couple of months ago, my uncle heard strange sounds coming from his bathroom. He went in and discovered a squirrel flailing about in the toilet. Apparently, it came through the venting pipe and up into the bowl. He scooped it up somehow and took it outside. Maybe instead of terrifying reptiles, you have a friendly toilet squirrel?

  109. Be careful of the cherry bomb type of fixes. True story: A guy around here had a septic system that was running slow. So his friend with access to dynamite says “I can fix that!” which is a phrase that should be right up there with “Hold my beer and watch this!”. They go out back to where the leach field is, and he puts sticks of dynamite in the dirt where the lines run, then lights them all off. The ground shuddered. Dirt flew into the air. And from the plumbing vents on the room of the house, shit water flew up like a geyser. But that’s not the worst of it. The toilet closest to where the waste plumbing went out of the house also vomited shit water like a geyser- all over the walls and ceiling of the bathroom and… all over the wife, innocently napping in the bedroom that the bathroom attached to. Needless to say, she was not amused in the fucking least by her husband & friend’s antics.

  112. Toilet ghosts sound terrifying. I only have attic ghosts but when I told the priest at my church, he thought I was joking. Apparently they need permission from the Vatican and a TON of proof to do anything. Super unhelpful.

  113. Try changing the flapper. Or getting a priest to change the flapper. Usually when they wear out, the water just runs continuously but sometimes you will hear a gurgling noise.

  114. if you call Jason Hawes from the TV show Ghost Hunters, you’re covered. He can hunt your toilet ghost and fix the plumbing because he is also a plumber for Roto-Rooter. Honestly. It’s your problems solved in one fell swoop.

  115. That’s what you get for interrupting the cats’ very important meeting! I wouldn’t put it past them to have messed with your toilet. Just in case they’re not finished with their revenge, keep checking your shoes before you put them on.

  117. When I was four years old I heard my Aunt Cindy say that there were alligators in Oyster Creek (Clute, Texas) and then a few days later I heard my Dad “tsk tsk-ing” because he saw that some people had run their sewer line into Oyster Creek. My four year old brain connected the two, and then for several months I wouldn’t go to the bathroom at my Grannie’s house (in Clute) because I was afraid that alligators would come up the renegade sewer line and bite my butt. My Grannie peed her pants laughing when I finally told her what was going on. So yeah, I totally believe the alligators in the toilet story.

  119. Ever since a restaurant down the road had a water moccasin in its toilet, I always check the toilet. Another neuroses of mine, remember that CSI episode where people were living in some guy’s attic? Well, in my old house, there were water pipes (for sprinklers) in the attic. And since they were the wrong type of pipes, they could freeze (happened to people down the road). My husband would leave the attic door open on cold nights, but it was in the closet, off the master bedroom. I could NEVER sleep with that thing open, thinking that there may be a psychotic killer in the attic.

  120. OK. I’m going to have to confess at last and give you MY long-misunderstood lyrics. It involved clean alligators.
    “We’ve got CLEAN ALLIGATORS and long-necked geese
    Humpty-backed camels and chimpanzees.
    Cats and rats and elephants, but SURE AS YOU’RE BORN,
    I just can’t find your unicorn.”

    Admittedly I was a sleepy child when I first heard the song but still…

  121. Don’t be like all those dumbasses in the horror movies- move now while you still have the chance! Tell Victor that before the walls start dripping blood, you must leave and never look back!

  122. It’s likely to be a clog in the air vent for that bathroom, not the plumbing itself. Had a plumber in for other work and mentioned the talking toilet. He got on the roof with an air pressure hose and blew the clog out. No more gurgling toilet after that.

  123. Call the plumber, especially if you have a septic tank. This happened to me once (warning glugs from the toilet) and the whole thing ended up backing up on me while I was in the shower. I was suddenly ankle deep in shit water. Best part, I had just moved there to start over, had just started therapy that morning. I was pretty much standing there yelling at God, “Are you kidding me? I’m trying to clean up my life and I end up literally standing in shit? This is NOT helping!”

  124. Simply point out to Victor that if there is an alligator in there, imagine the mess it could make if it chose to leap out, jaws gnashing, whilst Victor was peeing. He wouldn’t be so cavalier about it then I bet.

  125. FYI-If you are changing out your toilets, it is well worth the time, expense, and possible felonious criminal charges and penalties to take a road trip to O CANADA to get yourself a 5 gallon flusher….and while you are there I could use some 100 watt, energy sucking, fire starting light bulbs!!!!

  127. I have an irrational fear that I’ll find a human head in a public toilet. At least they don’t bite though. Oh god..I hope they don’t bite.

  128. On the other hand, if you did have an alligator in your toilet, you could keep it and take it to parties with little kids, whereupon said alligator will decide to pee on the floor, resulting in a very upset grandmother who will use fancy hand towels to clean it up and multiple screaming children (who received a very quick lesson in alligator anatomy) are all shouting “that’s a penis! That’s an alligator penis! GROOSSSSSS!!!”. Prior to attending this exact party, I had never needed to know about alligator penis. And now I have seen one in all its glory. It was slightly traumatizing.

  129. On one of my trips to India I went to the toilet, got up to flush and there was a giant rat the size of a miniature pig sitting in the toilet bowl with just its head popping out of the water. Backpacking at its absolute finest. My bet it is most definitely is an alligator.

  132. See, this is the REAL reason I’ll never move from Canada. it’s not the universal health care, it’s the fucking alliagtors,snakes, and other venomous creepy crawly shit that can’t survive Canadian winters. I’d rather freeze half the damn year than worry about alligators in the plumbing.

    Personally, I’ve always had a fear of outhouses. God only knows what is down there, waiting for an unsuspecting butt to munch. shudder

  136. My inlaws once had a squirrel in their toilet through the air vent. Squirrels aren’t cute when they’re fluffy; imagine when they’re wet.

  137. When I was a kid we had pet goldfish. One was sick and started turning kind of black in color so my mom decided to get rid of him before the other fish got sick too. She tried to flush him while he was still alive (looking back this is sick and cruel but at the time I was like 7 and didn’t know any better). Darned fish kept swimming back up for over a week and we kept having to do our business on the sad dying fish. And people wonder why I’m not quite a normal adult….

  138. I very much regret reading all the comments on this post. I have learned horrific things that I can’t un-learn.

  141. Reading the comments has reminded me of the toilet issues I’ve encountered in my life. In my condo, which was on the ground floor, if there was a big rain storm, my toilet would fill up instead of draining. That was fun during parties.

    Our brand new $34 million building has a honking toilet. It flushes fine, until the end when it delivers a soft honk. Maybe they trapped a goose in there and it’s crying to get out?

    I had a toilet leak in my apartment, which I didn’t notice because it was mostly in the spare bedroom, where I never went. It destroyed a bunch of my books, and the carpet and probably the drywall. That was fine, because one day, when I was at work, my unapproved dog was locked up in that bedroom and tore up the carpet and door and wood trim…but I still got my deposit back, because they were going to have to replace everything anyway.

  142. I was at work one day (in a hospital) and was using the toilet when it growled and spit at me. I was concerned that there was some kind of acid in that spit and was sure I felt my butt burning all day. Who knows what lives in a hospitals pipes.

  144. By the way, “hurk-hurk-bork” is the perfect description of cat barfing sounds. Now I just need a phrase to describe rustling sound of the Christmas tree branches that happens approximately 5 minutes before “hurk-hurk-bork”.

  147. You’re only in trouble if your daughter puts her hands on the TV and says, “They’re PEEEEING.” (TOILTERGEIST)

  151. When I was very young, something was wrong with our toilet. I overheard my parents saying “Maybe the snake is broken. We’ll need to get a new snake.” I was TERRIFIED to use the toilet for YEARS because I thought a snake was going to bite my butt.

  153. We have a book called “Alberto, the Dancing Alligator.” In the book Alberto accidentally ends up getting flushed down the toilet while he is practicing the tango with a girl named Tina. Chaos ensues. Spoiler alert: Alberto makes it back to Tina. It’s an awesome, and hysterical, book.

  154. I’m sorry about your toilet woes. I had a talking toilet one day and the landlord said he’d be by after the football game but did I have a plunger I could lend the neighbor. You’d think he might have noticed a connection there but no…. I did and on the way to the neighbor I found another neighbor with a talking toilet the three of us noticed the city sewer truck and other neighbors all standing around looking worried. Needless to say the landlord missed the rest of the game since it was his pipes lousing up the whole ‘hood. Take talking toilets seriously.

  155. When I was little, I kid you not, I went through a phase when I was terribly afraid of snakes in the toilet, and I wouldn’t use the bathroom unless someone else had JUST GONE (so had flushed, and pushed the snakes further down the pipes, opening a narrow window of opportunity for me to pee without molestation by toilet snakes).

    I’m still deathly afraid of snakes, but not so much toilets anymore.

  157. All I can say is that I’m glad I’m not the only one who goes racing through the house to hurl hurling cats in the general direction of tile…

  158. My friend lived in an old apparent building once and her toilet sounded like the souls of dying children were trying to escape when you flushed it. It was creepy.

  159. Not for nothin’ but my toilet was shitting, as was my shower and bathtub, a few months ago. Convinced this was the opposite of proper function, I called my trusty plumber.

    Loonnnnnnnng story short, and $13K later, I have new sewer lines and no alligators or snakes inside them.

  160. Holy Shit, my brain is exploding!
    This post was so funny that it made me go back and read the CONVERSATIONS (because they’re my favorite and I read them when I’m jonesing for Lawson humor)…and I found this totally by accident from your “Jesus would probably find this hilarious” post:

    me: You think those people didn’t judge that miracle? “Oh, Jesus. We don’t have any fish. Oh, and now we also don’t have a net. Awesome. Thanks Jesus.”

    Victor: I think we need to stop having this conversation.

    me: Because we might get plagued with a plumbing-based “miracle”?

    …watch out, your blog posts are happening. It’s like Stranger Than Fiction!

  162. Erika I was afraid of sharks in the shower. I’m not sure if it’s stranger that I thought they could travel through the pipes or that they clearly had a vendetta against me.

  163. HOW CAN YOU BE SO FUNNY?!?!?!!! Sorry for shouting, but I think you may possibly be responsible for my soon-to-occur aneurysm due to too much laughing.

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