Scooping Radioactive Poop

They gave us the "World's Best" corn-based kitty litter, that you can flush down the toilet.  They gave us the instructions about how we should never put the radioactive poop in the trash, since it will set off alarms at the county dump.  They even gave us a scooper and a two-week supply of rubber gloves.  Seems easy enough, right?  

I was not prepared for what a production this would turn out to be.  

Since Mister is in our downstairs finished-room, there is one small half-bath down there.  The half-bath has to send the water uphill, so there's a charming little pump that makes awful little rushing noises every time the sink is used or the toilet is flushed.  Suffice it to say, the thing doesn't really inspire a heck of a lot of confidence.

I donned my antiseptic-looking glove and got to work.  First, I had to take care of the poop that hadn't quite made it into the expensive, corn-based litter.  Dumped all that into the toilet.  Flushed.  The water came perilously close to the surface of the bowl, then suddenly dipped as the RRRRR-RRRRR-RRRRRRR of the pump pulled it back down.  Smugly I thought to myself, that wasn't so hard.

I scooped the first bolus of urine out of the box and dumped it in the toilet.  Flushed.  Waited while the water filled almost to the top and then again subsided.  RRRRRR-RRRRRR-RRRRRRRRRRRRR.  Peeked into the toilet.  There the bolus of corn-caked urine sat, at the bottom of the toilet.  Hunh.

So I flushed again.  RRRRR-RRRRR-Well, you get the idea.  Still, the little inedible corn ball sat at the bottom of the toilet.  

Now I was getting frustrated.  How the heck was I supposed do dispose of this stuff properly if it stubbornly refused to be flushed away into the city's sewage system?!

As I stood there, gloved hand holding the scooper, annoyed look on my face, stewing over my options and trying to determine the effectiveness of carrying all the waste products up to the upstairs toilets and depositing them there, a miraculous thing happened.  (Ok, honestly, I have to call bulls*%t on myself here.  It really wasn't a miracle--it was simple physics.  But at that moment, with my scooper covered in radioactive waste and feeling a tremendous sense of FAIL, it did feel as though it was a minor miracle.)  What happened was, the urine fritter had disintegrated.  Now it just looked like sand on the bottom of the toilet.  I flushed again, and this time, it disappeared!

Elated, I dumped in another tinkle-hush-puppy and waited.  A minute or so passed, and once again, it was just mush on the bottom of the toilet.  Finally, I was on to something!  I realized, right then and there, that I'm going to need to get up at least another 15 minutes to half-an-hour earlier than usual on work days to account for all the waiting and flushing, but it was worth it to have found a way to make the pee-pee polenta disposal work.  

(Thank goodness I only have to do it 13 more times!)