Sunday, September 28, 2008

Fire Hot!

One night while I was making dinner, a sudden cry arose from our bedroom. It was definitely Ellie's cry and it wasn't a normal cry. It seemed more on the scared than the hurt end, so I washed my hands and went in to see what she was up to.

As I entered the room, she managed to get the phrase "fire hot!" out between sobs. I couldn't figure out what she'd done, as it was obvious nothing was burning. Since I couldn't see a problem, I quit looking and comforted Ellie instead. It was then that I noticed her sneak a peek at the electrical outlet. Following her gaze, this is what I saw.


I exclaimed rather loudly, and Ellie started crying again. I took the time to explain to Ellie that she'd done something wrong, which I suspect might've been redundant. Of course, the next step was to grab the camera. Afterward, I flipped the breaker, which surprisingly hadn't popped, got a pair of leather gloves, and pulled the tweezers out. They were pretty well jammed in and were still hot. They'd lost a non-trivial portion of their mass in the ordeal.
I was somewhat surprised she'd play with electricity after the Roomba incident, but it's understandable given that the outlet and the Roomba's charger don't look that similar.

5 comments:

Ariana said...

yipe!

The Scherms said...

WOW!!! I can't believe she got those in there like that! That's making me reconsider my not wanting to baby-proof and letting Lars learn by example. I've heard of sticking a key in, but Ellie really took the cake here!
I'm glad she wasn't badly hurt:)

Leif Wickland said...

I'm pretty sure the tweezers were safer than putting a key in the outlet. The way I figure it, she managed to hit the ground first and the hot next, so that at no point was she the ground. All she did was turn the tweezers into a heater element. They weren't conductive enough to flip the breaker, but they were resistive enough to get hot fast.

Jaime said...

Bet she won't try that again! At least, we can hope not. :-) Glad she wasn't hurt too badly and mainly just scared.

Leslie said...

My heart dropped when I saw that picture. Thank the Lord He was watching out for her!