Estimated read time: 2-3 minutes
This archived news story is available only for your personal, non-commercial use. Information in the story may be outdated or superseded by additional information. Reading or replaying the story in its archived form does not constitute a republication of the story.
CLINTON, Davis County — If you were like me as a kid, a loose tooth was a terrible thing, and that gross feeling of newly vacant gums was even worse.
But maybe I would've felt a little better about the whole (and frankly weird) process if I had a unique way to remove my loose teeth, rather than reluctantly using my fingers.
Clinton residents 6-year-old Ruby McFarland and her dad Justin decided that Ruby's second loose tooth needed a grand entrance as a free tooth on Earth before it was twinkled away into fairyland.
"We had been talking about pulling it out with my drone for over a week, but it was a rainy week so we waited for it to dry up so I could fly the drone outside, so the tooth was really loose by this time," Justin McFarland said.
Yes, McFarland said, that is a little bit of scared panic on Ruby's face in the video as the drone takes off and hovers before completing the tooth-pulling deed. The building tension of three attempts to pull a tooth will do that, and we can all blame it on the uncooperative string, which kept slipping off Ruby's tooth.
As a drone advocate, McFarland said his first worry in this process was safety first, just like any drone flight he plans. He walked the path of the planned flight to make sure there were no obstacles and that no people would be in danger.
"I really don't like to fly around people because these drones are known to lose connection and crash, and the blades can do some harm. So you'll see in the video I take off, hover, make sure I've got control, and then fly away from her and anybody else in the area," McFarland said. "If anybody wishes to perform similar actions like in my video, I would urge them to plan out the flight path and prevent accidents."
