Operation Domino

Our vacation cabin had a light and airy screened in porch. While child proofing the premises we immediately noticed its' one pitfall: small openings between the diagonally placed floor planks. Now, this was in northwest Wisconsin, so of course there was a screen underneath the floor so mosquitoes couldn't get in - but as we all know, a screen on the bottom doesn't stop small children from shoving things down the slats from the top.

Roman found the dominoes that belonged to the cabin's owners. Noah told Deacon and Roman not to play dominoes on the porch because of the chance the dominoes could accidentally fall through the cracks. Later, Roman saw the slats in the cabin floor. And Roman started inserting dominoes as if it was his very own piggy bank and the dominoes were his wealth. I guess none of them went down accidentally.

Of course Noah and I, being the conscientious renters that we are (I spent so much time cleaning our first apartment when we left, I am sure I removed 20 years worth of grime...), decided that we needed to mount a massive domino rescue mission. We decided to involve Deacon because we made it a game and thought it would be an incredible problem solving learning opportunity and well; we needed his small hands and little arms.

We sat there on the porch with the AWOL dominoes 6 inches under our feet and thought about our options. We asked Deacon how we could get them out. He shared with us an elaborate scheme that was all about a massive machine with hands that could fit through the slats and pull the dominoes out. We applauded the fact that he realized that pulling them out the way they went in was something to be considered. He then suggested a machine that would lift the planks away from the floor so we could reach in. We did not have any small but long and incredibly coordinated and strong tweezers, nor did we have the tools to remove a plank. We told Deacon we needed to think things through from a different angle.

Deacon, Roman and I went outside and got on our bellies to review the situation from underneath. The porch, and entire cabin, was elevated about a foot off the ground. The dead animal smell that had plagued us intermittently was definitely coming from under there. We could clearly see the screen about 10 inches up and the screen was coming away from the wall along one of the sides. Bingo. We just needed to figure out a way to get the dominoes to move along the screen, half way across the room, to the hole. Then Deacon should be able to reach in and get them. The main problem with this plan was the fact that around the whole house ran a wooden fence of sorts, to keep small animals from dying under the house. There were a few areas that I thought Deacon may be able to get through, but even if we got him in it was unclear to me if he would be able to successfully move the dominoes.

Enter broom and wire clothes hanger. Noah stayed inside guiding the dominoes with the wire clothes hanger through the slats and I was able to get a broom handle through one of the holes in the fence to move things along from underneath. Working together, and with some of Noah's physics sense, we were able to get the dominoes to fall through the hole to the ground and Deacon was very proud to complete the mission by carefully collecting each one. We returned the dominoes to a high shelf and never did count to be sure we had them all. Some information is best unknown.