Denture Rescue in 1908

The Daily Kennebec Journal reported on an interesting and almost unbelievable tale of denture rescue from the Victorian era.

The Washington County railroad has gone all the other railroads in the country one better in the matter of accommodating its patrons. A passenger one day last week lost a set of false teeth out of the window. The loss was reported to the obliging conductor, who stopped the train, backed to the scene of catastrophe, where the missing molars were found and returned to their owner.

[Source: Daily Kennebec Journal, April 10, 1908, page 6]

This is not the first denture-related Strange Maine story, as those of you who remember the denture-stealing mouse of 2007 will have noticed.

Amuck with March Mouse Madness!

We'd like to reassure the blog Mainiac Musings that certainly no offense is taken to the titling of the story about a Maine rodent-gone-wild with our name. If you haven't heard the story yet, here it is. This is great stuff!!!

Mouse Absconds With Maine Man's Dentures

WATERVILLE, Maine (AP) -- Never underestimate a mouse's determination. There's a mouse in Bill Exner's house that he says he has captured three times. Each time, the mouse escaped, and the last time the rodent made off with his lower dentures.

Exner, 68, said he and his wife Shirley scoured his bedroom after the dentures disappeared from his night stand.

"We moved the bed, moved the dressers and the night stand and tore the closet apart," he said. "I said, 'I knew that little stinker stole my teeth' - I just knew it."

They found a small opening in a wall where they suspected the mouse was coming and going, and their daughter's fiance, Eric Holt, stepped in to help.

"He brought a crowbar and hammer and he sawed off a section of wood and pulled up the molding and everything," Exner said. "It was quite a job."

They retrieved the dentures, and Holt suggested his future father-in-law boil them in peroxide and whatever else he could find for to disinfect it.

The mouse apparently isn't done. It frequently comes out and stares at Exner, his wife said.

"He's taunting him - I swear he's taunting him," Shirley Exner said.
[Source]