Maria Rodger was reaching into the washing machine when she felt something move.

Glen Simmons-Staves Associated Press

2 hours, 26 minutes ago

   

  

 

A woman got the shock of her life when she found an 8-inch man mixed in with clothes in her washing machine.

A woman got the shock of her life when she found an 8-inch man mixed in with clothes in her washing machine.

 

 

GOTHAM, Mass – A woman got the shock of her life when she found an 8-inch man mixed in with clothes in her washing machine. The man, identified as George Thumb, a distant relative of Tom Thumb, somehow got into the water pipes wearing miniature scuba gear and ended up in Maria Rodger’s 2002 front-loading Kenmore washing machine. 

After Mrs. Rodger took her blue jeans out of the machine Wednesday, she reached back into the load and felt something move.

“I jumped back and all of sudden this little man in tiny scuba gear starts climbing out of the washing machine, it really freaked me out!” Rodger told WMTW-TV.

Mrs. Rodger quickly closed the lid and called the local police, but they didn’t want anything to do with the little man, they suggested she call midget control.   

Mrs. Rodger quickly closed the lid and called the local police, but they didn't want anything to do with the little man, they suggested she call midget control.

Mrs. Rodger quickly closed the lid and called the local police, but they didn't want anything to do with the little man, they suggested she call midget control.

 
 

Once out of the machine, the angry little man wrapped himself around Burgess’s finger, in a choke hold cutting off the blood flow. Burgess then wrestled the dreadful little man off her finger, took a few photographs for evidence, put him into a small cage and then brought him to the Midget Control office in Gotham. 

 

Burgess then wrestled the dreadful little man off her finger, took a few photographs for evidence, put him into a small cage and then brought him to the Midget Control office in Gotham.

Burgess then wrestled the dreadful little man off her finger, took a few photographs for evidence, put him into a small cage and then brought him to the Midget Control office in Gotham.

 

 

 

 

That’s where Julie Leonardo, a midget rehabilitator who works at the National Midget Foundation, identified the small man as George Thumb, great, great grandson of Thomas Thumb (the famous miniature man mentioned in the Guiness Book of World Records. Miniature men typically prey on small rodents, fish and large insects, but are not man killers, she said.

 

Leonardo and Gotham’s Midget Control officer planned to find the angry man a home at a little person’s refuge.

But how the man ended up in the washing machine remains a mystery—he talks just too high to understand what he’s saying.  Burgess guessed he was searching for lost wedding rings in the water pipes and that he somehow made a wrong turn and couldn’t find his way back.  Somehow he ended up in the washing machine and probably got there during the rinse cycle, she said.

In the meantime, Mrs. Rodger said she’s a little paranoid of little people now.

“Now that he’s gone, I’m going to be checking crevices and corners,” She said. “I’m going to be looking in the tub first — before and after, maybe even during, the rinse cycle.”