Toilet Scare

I was blowing drying my hair the other morning when out of the corner of my eye I detected motion. I turned my head and found that the water in the toilet bowl was sloshing. I don't mean to imply little waves, it was sloshing up the sides of the bowl. I immediately attempted to process what it was that I was seeing. I had not bumped the toilet, no one had entered the room, I had not dropped anything into the bowl, we live in Iowa so there was no earthquake. As I was processing what I was seeing the water returned to its normal placid state although I thought that the water level looked slightly lower than normal. Perplexed but unconcerned I returned to blow drying my hair. A few minutes later I again detected motion and saw that the water was again sloshing ABA the toilet bowl. No longer willing to ignore an obvious issue I called my husband who interpreted my use of the word sloshing as little ripples and explained the concept of atmospheric pressure to me. We were in the process of a large storm front moving into the area. Unconvinced but reassured that that there was a logical explanation instead of the possession theory I had been working on, I went back to my day.

Twenty minutes later on my way back to the bathroom after dressing I heard a weird noise which caused me to pause before entering the room. Upon entering I saw that the toilet water had been sucked out of the bowl and that at the opening of the bowl bottom water was gurgling around and being forced out of the bowl in a spray that was shooting across the room and had already soaked my floor rugs and my newly painted walls. I decided the toilet was indeed possessed, throwing the atmospheric pressure idea out the window and calling my husband back. I say 3 foot spray range and he hears leaking. After convincing him that I meant what I was saying and taking video footage of the possession he remembers that there was a sewer company that was supposed to be cleaning sewers in our town this month. He calls City Hall and it was determined that yes that is what had caused our toilet to behave outside of its normally calm behavioral pattern. I then had to Saran wrap the toilet, put the lid down, clean up a huge flood and the resulting load of laundry before I could go on with my day. Alls well that ends well.