What was the strangest thing you found stuck in a modern vacuum

[tolivac]

WEIRD---Dyson the machine was clogged-hose contained a slender bottle of nail polish-spilled on the workbench when pulled out!!!Nice BRIGHT RED!!!Carpet on the bench had to be replaced.

 

[amtraksebo1997]

About a year ago, my school held this sort of "giving Tuesday" thing, which basically consisted of packing up clothes to send to the needy, making gift bags of toiletries for veterans, etc. At the end we were instructed to help the janitor do various cleaning tasks if we didn't have anything better to do. I jumped on the opportunity to vacuum the stairs and stuff with a Shark Cordless stick vac they had. My school also has this "student lounge", which a couple of kids were vacuuming with a Shark Navigator they also had. I walked in on them vacuuming a chair with the wand, not in Lift-Away mode, but rather with the powerhead and body sitting on a sofa. Eventually they stopped what they were doing and let me take over, but when I did, I discovered that one of them had sucked up a Twix bar, a pen, and some wet grass. Worse yet, it clogged the handle.

Why are teenagers like this?

 

[eurekaprince]

My friend bought a cheap bagless upright many years ago. The vacuum’s plastic bin seemed to be a sign to her that she could use the machine to suck up spills in the kitchen and bathroom. She called me one day to come over to see why her vacuum was no longer working. The bin was full of sopping wet dirt! I am surprised she did not get electrocuted! She was really lucky!!!

Footnote: I threw out the vacuum, recommended a retro Hoover Constellation (which she bought) and taught her that regular household vacuums are not meant to be used on wet surfaces!

 

[justjunque]

I don't know if it really qualifies as strange, but it was a first for me.
A while back, I picked up a super clean looking Oreck commercial upright. It was only a couple of years old, and it was being sold fairly cheap, because it wouldn't run when you hit the switch.
Having just enough knowledge of Orecks to get myself in trouble, I figured it was the wires inside the handle, and I was about to get myself a steal.
Turns out, the wires were fine. The reason it won't run is because the motor is toast. The culprit? A sock, all jammed up inside the fan housing.

 

[human]

When I was in high school, back in the early '80s, my dad rescued an Electrolux 1205 off of a neighbor's trash pile. It had no suction through the hose and he quickly deduced there was a blockage. It turned out to have a significant amount of commercial grade carpeting, the kind that unravels by the yard when you pull one strand, was stuck up inside the hose. Of course, it still didn't have much suction through the non-electrified hose because it leaked like the proverbial sieve. Of course, I didn't understand that at the time. It was not until I effected its second rescue from their attic in 2016 and hooked it up to a proper electrified vinyl replacement hose and a power nozzle, probably the first time in its existence, that its true cleaning potential was fully unleashed.