Memo to Kidnappers: Next Time, Don't Grab MacGuyver

That kid who got kidnapped at gunpoint from his bus stop in Florida last week and then escaped? Totally awesome.

Turns out that apparently the kidnapper left him bound in the woods. But he failed to reckon with the safety pin the kid had hidden in his mouth. From CNN:

Asked later by his parents why he did that, he said he "just thought it would be helpful," Kelle [the stepfather] said.

The abductor tied Clay up with duct tape and gagged him with a sock, Kelle said.

When the boy was sure the man had left, he spit the sock -- and the safety pin -- onto the ground. With his hands still bound in front of him,
Clay used a stick and his mouth to get the pin back.

"He used the safety pin to free himself by picking at [the duct tape] and more or less untying what was binding him," Kelle said. "And then he used that and his mouth once he was free to pull the duct tape off."

Clay estimated the process took as long as an hour, his stepfather said.

The boy then walked until he found a farm worker with a cell phone.

What does this have to do with science, you ask? A lot of scientific research is about clever solutions to insoluble problems. How do we build that device? How do we set up a proper control group? How do we eliminate the improbable (because, as Sherlock Holmes says, whatever then remains must be the truth)?

This kid kept his cool, planned ahead, and got himself out of a jam with his brain. Somebody, please: Get this young man a scholarship to an engineering school.