The frog problem.

I once needed to turn my water stop-cock off, but it was down a narrow, three foot hole in the garden.  I had a long enough tap key but I couldn’t reach the tap because it was buried in soil that had fallen in the hole. I decided that I didn’t need to dig it out, just break up the impacted soil in order to reach the tap.  So I got a long spike and put it down the hole but stopped when I heard a loud squeak.  Peering down the hole I saw a small frog or toad at the bottom (don’t ask me what it lived on).  My problem was how to remove the frog using stuff I had to hand, without harming it (a key criterion).

It was too deep for my arm and all the wacky ideas I had didn’t have a hope. How could I remove the frog? (perhaps you could send me your ideas before you read further), I am very practical, but I failed to come up with single a plausible idea.

A few days later I was talking with friends and mentioned my problem.  My friend’s wife instantly came up with a workable solution.  Not only was it a workable solution, it was absolutely brilliant, true genius! 

The interesting point was that my friend’s wife knows nothing about frogs, engineering or mechanics.  She was a theatre nurse in a hospital.  Apparently, in operations, surgeons sometimes need to remove small pieces of tissue that have been cut off, so they use a small tube connected to a suction pump.  Her suggestion was to use my vacuum cleaner (with a four feet long tube) and pick up the frog with the suction.  Needless to say it was a complete triumph, though the frog did seem somewhat bemused.

The point is, my logic had completely failed, I would have come up with a laboured, cumbersome, scrappy solution, but someone with a completely different background and perspective had come up with a brilliant, effortless, low-cost, original and simple solution.

Perhaps we should think about who we include in the discussion when dealing with difficult problems.