HELP! How can I get this mussel out?

[JDM625]

Ok, this is the most ridiculous thing! I was scrubbing mussels for dinner lastnight, and one slippery fsucker flew out of my hand and went down the overflow pipe!

I've tried chopsticks, tongs, a knife, bottle brush but due to the angle, nothing is working. I can unscrew the S bend/trap underneath, but the hole within the overflow isn't wide enough to push the mussel through. Maybe I could push it up though?

Any other ideas to get it out before it stinks?

You can get long bendy drain rods which may help

I'd probably just get some of that Mr Muscle drain cleaner and use a funnel to pour it into the overflow pipe, that should dissolve it, hopefully, if it was out of its shell?

I forgot to add a pic of what I mean!

I'm assuming that it must be in its shell? Or else, drain cleaner would dissolve it quite easily, as you said Fionnula. Must be quite a skinny mussel though.

Or it's a very big sink and the photo doesn't really give an idea of scale.

I'm sorry but 😂😂😂

Vacuum cleaner?

Vacuum cleaner with a pop sock over the nozzle or something flexible you can get round the mussel, i.e. underneath it, and pull up using both ends. Even something like a narrow strip of oven tray liner - the sort that's reusable - might work.

Drain snake bendy cleaner thing or could you block the s bend from underneath completely (with someone's hand?) then fill the overflow with water..... would it float up?

Use a hoover attachment and suck it up

The sink is a regular sized butler sink.
The mussel is whole, in the shell and I assume fell in sideways.

Yes, I know its ridiculous. 😆

Some good suggestions, thank you.

Drill into it with a long drill bit then pull it back up?

To clarify, the pic above with the mussel is NOT the mussel in question, just an example of the size.

Seeing as mussels are still alive until you cook them and you clearly have at some surviving mussels, could you not organise them into a rescue party by giving them a piece of weighted string, forming them up into a chain of molluscs in the bottom of the sink, helping them to dangle the string down the drain, for the mussel in peril to grasp onto before they heave him up?

If there is a particularly self confident and calm mussel, maybe they could lie by the drain and give instructions to stop the stricken comrade from panicking?

I'd probably try to smash it up, so you can push it down - long screwdriver maybe??

Or if you have some of those crab/lobster picking skewer things they are quite strong with some flex in them.

My favourite post ever.

DH suggests smashing it with a screwdriver then rinsing the parts down.

Oh poor thing :(

Mussels have no central nervous system. I wouldn't worry. They feel no more pain than a plant. Better than rotting to death in a sink overflow

Bend some thin wire into a loop and try to push it past, then haul it up. A tiny aquarium net?

At this point the options are being smashed up with something or languishing in a sink overflow before dying a lingering death.

The lengths some molluscs will go to in avoidance of being boiled alive are astonishing.

OP have you explored taking off the s-bend/trap and pushing it up from below? In my (long and alarming) experience of things getting stuck in small places, coming out the way they went in is always easier than continuing to shove through. If that fails, I think you need to smash it into pieces (remembering the time I had to extract a bread stick from a light sabre) - but you'll need to rinse it all pretty thoroughly because that is going to HONK if bits linger.

PS I think many of us MNetters would appreciate a video if you succeed.

This is the booble plate all over again isn't it? How did the OP deal with that in the end?

Plants scream when they’re cut.

Hook end of a coat hanger?

Oh goodness. Agree with smashing and swilling.

It will stink to high heaven if it dies and goes off.