Giving the finger – part one

Has anyone else had one of those days where absolutely everything goes wrong? I think we all have these days.  I’ve always been accident prone, or should I say clumsy? Outings with friends often end with them scraping me off the pavement. I’ve fallen down stairs, up stairs, tripped over a leaf on the pavement, fallen over seaweed on the beach, sliced myself opening cans, cut, bruised and broken many areas of my body.  So I guess anyone reading this gets the drift – I’m just plain clumsy.

However, I would like to relate one of my accidents where bones could not be mended.  It happened almost three years ago. My partner had just left for work (he did shift work) and I was in the kitchen doing the lunch dishes.  We had adopted a little dog as a friend for our Airedale.  Another terrier but the smallest we could find. The Airedale never had the hunting and killing instinct, but this little girl sure did. Within days our yard was void of any wildlife. We kept the chooks in their pen which was large and quite secure.  She spent all of her waking hours watching them. I might add they were larger than her.

So, doing the dishes, I heard this chook screaming. It was a blood-curdling noise, so I immediately raced up the yard knowing in the back of my mind what was happening.  She had managed to move the chicken wire gradually and wriggled her way under and was going to get that chook. Feathers were flying, and the other two chooks just stood there watching – why do they do that? Surely instinct should tell them to hide.

I grabbed the dog off the chook. I could see where she had moved the wiring and thought I’d throw her out of the pen, close the gate and fix where she had entered before she could come back in. Yeah, right! I threw her out of the wooden gate, slammed it, on my finger with force. Ouch! I looked down, and there was the tip of my finger on the ground, looking up at me with its newly manicured nail taunting me. I thought, “this is just a dream, I will wake up in a minute. No-one removes their finger in a wooden gate”.

So I clenched my left hand to stem the blood flow, although there wasn’t much. I picked up the finger in the right hand. There was no way I could fix that wire as I had my hands full, so to speak.

I rang an ambulance for myself. The operator kept me calm. She told me to wait out the front and to wrap the finger in a towel which I did. I rang my husband who then had to ring his work and tell them he wasn’t coming in as his wife had had yet another accident.

The ambulance came. I walked down our long drive to meet them. When I was almost there, I turned around and went to check that I’d locked the front door. I’d been in strife too many times for leaving it open. Even if I’d chopped off my foot, I’d probably have checked that door.

The ambulance driver said I should have got an Airedale instead when I explained what had happened. I said the dog that watched was an Airedale. He got very excited and asked if he could say hello to him. Yes, why not. I thought “I’m bleeding to death here and you want to say g’day to my dog”. But the other ambulance person was looking after me. She said they probably wouldn’t reattach so not to get my hopes up. After an eternity the driver came back. He said he had some bad news. She had got back in and killed the whole three chooks.  That day I lost my finger and my chooks.

Have you ever had one of these days?

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