Kid's, listen to your parents!!!

[chris lavoie]

We moved to Ontario from the big city of Winnipeg (1974). The person we bought our place off of warned my dad about deep, old wells that were down in a forested area by Eagle Lake. When the wells were abandoned in the early 60's, the owners just covered them up with plywood. My dad repeated this info to me and sternly told me to keep away from there. But I did not listen. One day I put on my snowshoes and went in the forbiden zone to set rabbit snares. Found a trail that ran over a small mound of snow and set a snare. Next day I went and checked my snare line. The snare on the mound had a rabbit in it. As I exitedly retreived the rabbit, the bottom fell from under me. I fell in a well about 15'. A cross bar made out of a wooden beam stopped my fall.My snow shoes also helped to stop my fall. After a few minutes I realized the trouble I was in and started using my back on one side and took my snowshoes off and used my back and feet to shimmy my self out of the well. The cribbing of the well was made out of wood, which was now rotted. I could hear pices of wood breaking off and falling in the water WAY below. Took about 20 minutes. I didn't tell my parents for a few years after. I was about 13 years old.

[DouglasSpear]

Wow, that's a pretty cool story with a valuable lesson. My Grandfather once told me that when he was just a few years old he was playing near a water well that he was told he shouldn't be playing around. He kept playing and looking down the well and ended up falling in. He couldn't swim and he started to drown. The next thing he remembered was sitting in front of the well soaking wet and coughing up water. He looked around and no one was in sight so he isn't sure how he got out of the well or who got him out. He said he never found out who pulled him out and he doesn't recall swimming up to the top and climbing out himself since he was drowning but he said he always listened to his parents when they warned him of something dangerous.