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One crappy iPod

Nicole Girard Staff Writer, CNET News.com
Nicole Girard
is a CNET News.com intern from Tempe, Ariz. She writes about gadgets and beyond.
Nicole Girard

Normally, it's the just some of the songs downloaded onto Apple's iPod that are crappy. Not the device itself.

That all changed at Santa Clara University however, when a student accidentally flushed her iPod down the toilet, clogging the pipes.

The student, who has since come forward, said she was listening to her pink iPod Mini when she flushed the toilet, according to Santa Clara, Calif.-based NBC 11. She noticed a tug at her earphones as the device swirled down the sewage pipes of the College of Arts and Sciences Building.

A campus maintenance worker called the four-inch long portable music player "indestructible," as repeated attempts to free the iPod failed, the story said.

Crews tried breaking the iPod before hiring an independent contractor who managed to move the iPod 20 feet before it became stuck again, the story said.

In order to get the iPod out from under the Arts and Sciences building, crews caused a water surge that pushed the iPod into a more accessible pipe.

Next, a water company was hired to blast water into the pipe, which enabled crews to retrieve the iPod from a sewage disposal point nearby.

In the end, the seemingly innocent iPod caused a semester-long sewage problem that cost the university $1,000 a week.

Talk about a quality device.