It’s a big, big shelf…
Those of you who were around in the 80’s, particularly here in the US, probably recall the 
story of Baby Jessica, the 18 month old girl who fell into a narrow well in October 1987. It was a media sensation back in the good old days of journalism… before media circuses typically involved non-famous people. It took rescuers two days to find a way to extract Jessica from her intubated prison, but she made it out alive and so lived to prosper off the eventual movie rights.
Well, I was reminded of that incident a few weeks ago while I was putting together another fucked up performance of Shelf Critter Theatre. That would be the “Viewer Mail” episode from March 16th that featured a small scene with SCT’s two newest darlings…
There are apparently worse fates than being led off to a secluded place with Uncle Snuggie.
That was the last time you saw either Bearcat or Zeeba, the two much anticipated “hatchlings” of Mitzi, on my blog. Upon “filming” that scene, I put the two little critters back in their normal spot on the shelf, which due to a major overcrowding problem, is in the very right-front corner of the top tier…
My Sis? Oh, she went bye bye!
I placed Zeeba on the shelf first, than put her sister next to her…. only to accidentally knock the purple striped horse on her side and….. well, you see that hole in the photo up there? That’s where the hollow poles that hold each shelf up are stacked. Let’s look at that first photo again…
That’s a loooooong way down.
See where the pink elephant’s hanging up? Poor Zeeba had fallen all the way down to the bottom of that shaft… and the only way to get her free was to completely take apart the right half of the shelf! That meant removing three tiers full of junk, disassembling the entire thing, then putting everything back together again! Damn, was a $2.50 Hatchimals toy really worth all that trouble?
How would you like to fall into this?
Sigh….. yeah, she is.
You better behave while you’re boxed up with all those other critters, Mitzi!
This past Thursday, after leaving Zeeba buried in her plastic tomb for four weeks, I’d finally decided to take up the arduous task of inconveniencing everyone else just to save a clumsy little zebra. So the upper shelf, which is mostly populated with SCT characters, came down and got boxed up first. Careful Mitzi, get your paw off of Shadow’s ass. Then came the tier that’s mostly full of sports figures and bobbleheads. That finally got me down to the drinkware section that I’ll never actually use for its intended purpose…
My cups runneth over…
After stacking and removing soda cups from just about every stadium within a 500 mile radius, I finally made it to Ground Zero…
Now would be a great time to take a lunch break…
Our adorable little victim should be inside the bottom of that pole there. Let’s bring in the crane and remove the last piece of rubble from this very expensive rescue effort…
There you are! Now it’s time to get your ass paddled for all this trouble…
And so the hatchlings were reunited, and are now free to appear in SCT episodes once again…
That was fun, Sis! I’m totally going down there again!
I don’t think you’ll be getting poleback rides again anytime soon, little miss trouble. After painstakingly reconstructing the four tier shelf I had just torn down, I took some drastic measures to ensure something like this tragedy never happens again…
Duct tape really does fix everything!
Evil Squirrel's Nest 
Whew…that was close. Good use of the duct tape 😁
Anyone who manages top fall through the duct tape is on their own getting back out…
Gracious good golly, what will go wrong for your shelf critters next? Duck tape to the rescue. In fact if you ever get a duck to add to your collection I nominate Tape as its name. 😊
I have a little character from the cartoon Duck Tales buried on one of the bottom shelves, but she’s not in great shape… probably from spending too much time laying in the muddy backyard back in the day. Maybe another quacker will come into my life some day, and I can have Duck Tape come to the rescue to fix all of the problems on the Shelf,..,.
haha! Love the way you thought to take pictures of the whole operation/extraction! Yay for the rescue! 🙂
I had toyed with the idea of working it into a storyline for an episode, but never came up with enough to make it work… so I just made sure to capture the rescue so I could at least blog about it!
That could have been a media nightmare!
Thank goodness I got the mission completed before the camera crews showed up. There’s hardly any room in here as it is. Plus, as I can say from experience, when the news crews do show up at my house, I usually look like hell…
Ally Bean has the right idea – time to bring in a duck named Tape……that would be a perfect addition to the Shelf Critter Theater pile of crazies. Totally.
Pam
Duck Tape fixes everything… sounds like the Shelf’s version of the home improvement show!
My God…you do have a heart!
Yes I do, though it takes a proctologist to find it…
I’ve always known you had one.
Oh boy. You could have turned all that into “SCT – Rescue!”, you know…
I toyed with the episode idea for a few weeks, but got impatient with having one of my characters out of commission and had to intervene before I could complete a script. Maybe when it comes time for the made-for-TV movie based on the rescue…
Aw, poor little Zeeba. It was good of you to rescue her, especially with all the work involved. I can just imagine Mitzi coming out of such a situation knocked up again!
I would hope she’s on some better birth control 24/7/365 now, or she’s going to overpopulate my shelf on her own!
Whew! At least there was a happy ending for Zeeba after weeks of scar-inducing horror. 😛
Four and a half weeks stuck in the bottom of a five foot pipe must be awful traumatizing. Almost as much as having to spend the weekend with Snuggle Bear…
Bet that Zeeba will be dining out on that tale for the rest of her life now…
It might make her almost as famous as having someone like Mitzi for a mom…