We were greeted by an interesting visitor this morning. Mark was walking down the hall when he saw this beauty on the wall. We're not sure of the type, but everyone was happy that I killed it and dumped it outdoors.
This afternoon, we had another lock-out incident. Mark had decided to stay home while I went to pick up Catherine and Tracy ran a few short errands. To make him feel a little safer, he locked himself inside the master bedroom where he was playing with some of his toys. (This means that the key was in the bedroom with him. In fact, it was in the keyhole.)
At the last minute, he decided to come with me to fetch Catherine. To save time, he jumped out the window and closed it behind him. (This is not the preferred, or even allowed, way to exit the master bedroom, but that's what happened.) Next, to be "helpful," he closed the window behind him. Locked out! As soon as the window latched, we had no way of getting into the room. The hall door was locked, the bathroom window was latched, the porch window was latched, and the key was in the lock inside the room.
Hey, said Mark, Macguyver once faced this same problem. He slid some paper beneath the door and pushed the key through the lock until it dropped to the floor inside the room on the paper. Then, he slid the key beneath the door using the paper. We tried the same approach, but it didn't work. The key was partially turned in the keyhole, and we were unable to push it out.
I removed the faceplate from the door handle. That provided better access to the keyhole, but we didn't have anything that could latch on to the snub end of the key.
In the end, we called Roadrunner Locksmiths. What they had that we didn't was a very strong, 4-inch long needle-nose pliers. The locksmith grasped the snub-end of the key with the pliers and rotated it. It took several tries, but the lock finally opened. So, 3.5 hours later and R400 poorer, we had access to our room once again.
--Matt