I finally have a purely hypothetical answer to a question that's been gnawing at me for a couple years. Why is there a plunger outside on my back deck?

Well, what if a squirrel got itself stuck trying to crawl under your chain link fence, died and went unnoticed until it started to smell? Let's say at the time this squirrel was discovered, something had eaten it's face off down to the skull. A blunt handled instrument like a plunger for prodding said decaying, putrid squirrel out of the fence could really come in handy. That's at least until you start trying to put some muscle behind trying to release it. You're trying not to look straight at it because stuff is oozing out of it when, suddenly, its tail brushes against the skin on the top of your foot, because you're of course wearing sandals. That footwear choice was made during a simpler time when the only thing on your to do list was running the garbage and recycling out to the cans in the alley. Your senses being already heightened, the reaction you have to the tickling on your foot causes you to jerk the plunger in a manner which you would not otherwise have done. This movement severs the squirrel's exposed skull from the rest of its corpse. It is in this moment that you question the futility of your existence, poke the skull into the bag with the rest of the squirrel, run it out to the city garbage can, and finally return the plunger to its natural habitat on the deck where it will lie in wait until it is again called upon to provide assistance in some future ghastly task.

Again, this is purely hypothetical.