Skewered Plans
July 15th, 2004
It started off like any ordinary mountainbike ride. At the trailhead,
Helmutt and I covertly packed our backpacks with break down saws,
pruners, and any other "trail maintenance" equipment
that would fit. We were on a secret mission, with plans for a mostly
trailless canyon that I had discovered on a run the week before.
Big Plans.
We hopped on the bikes and headed up canyon. Our four legged friends
StarChild and ScruffBucket bounced and barked with excited anticipation.
Helmutt and the dogs got ahead from the start. I turned it down
a notch, conserving my energies for sawing logs rather than spinning
gears. I was enjoying the air, surprisingly cooler than the heat
of the valley not that far away. I was enjoying a relaxed bike
ride after a long day at work.
I guess I was enjoying pedaling too, because eventually I started
to catch up to Helmutt and the pooper patrol. StarChild came running
back, snorted a greeting, and dropped in behind me. ScruffBucket
was still galloping up ahead. Then I saw Helmutt starting off up
a distant climb. I suddenly felt the need to crank it up and close
the gap. The trail flattened out. I up shifted and started to really
step on it.
StarChild wasn't content with my progress. I saw her move out
from behind me to pass on the right. She made a break for it off
the side of the narrow trail, shooting through the tall grass with
her head lowered like she does whenever she's in full sprint.
She meant business.
Then we were side by side, hurtling down the trail at top speed.
Suddenly, there was a loud crack. StarChild was abruptly stopped
as I sped ahead. She immediately broke out into a prolonged series
of blood curdling yips, cries that burned into my memory. I slammed
my breaks into a sudden stop of my own, dropped the bike and ran
back up the trail. That's when I noticed a log, lying by the side
of the trail, that had been hidden in the tall grasses. A log that
was over 14 feet long and which tapered down to a smaller, javelin
sized point.
I don't like seeing blood. It makes me want to look away. And
now I was looking at the most horrible thing I'd ever seen. But
due to the urgency of the situation, I could not look away. StarChild
was impaled on the end of the log. It went in her thigh above her
knee, punched through the inside of her leg, and protruded out
by her calf, still partially covered in skin. The wound was raw
with torn flesh, Her whole leg twisted into an impossible angle.
She was stuck on the end.
She looked at me, imploring, her left ear bright red with fresh
blood. She wanted this stick out of her leg, pronto. I was about
to pull her leg free when I remembered some ancient first aid training:
leave impaled objects in place to minimize bleeding and infection.
Then I remembered our saws.
I called out to Helmutt, "Help, help!" He somehow heard
my call and spun around.
I threw down my pack in a nervous thud, and rifled through for
the saw. But StarChild wasn't so patient. She had yanked herself
off the pointy end and was standing there, relieved. She seemed
to be ignoring the fact that the skin of her thigh was split almost
all the way around her leg and was drooping down, leaving the inside
of her thigh and knee completely skinless and exposed.
Amazingly, the huge wound was mostly bloodless. Her fate seemed
better now, but we still felt an urgent need to get her out of
the woods and sewn up. We gathered our belongings and started back.
Could StarChild walk? She fired off a series of solid, defiant
steps towards the car, then suddenly stopped. She stood there like
a statue, unmoving, and gave me another one of her looks. A look
that said: I really want out of here but I ain't going to make
it on my own 4 feet so please don't leave me here carry me if you
have to because I'm still cute aren't I look I'm still wagging
my tail don't leave me here and could you tell ScruffBucket to
back off?
So we carried her. Very valiantly at first. 60 lbs can feel feather
weight when you're saving a little furry universe. But over time
you start to feel every bit of the burden. Helmutt and I took turns
carrying her. Turns that started off long, then became exponentially
shorter as our biceps became blown from carrying the wounded cargo.
Near the end, we were doing shifts that were probably less than
a minute long, but we made it, and StarChild seemed quite pleased
to be not walking. We carried her over a mile.
We dropped Scruffbucket off at the bachelor pad, then b-lined
for the emergency pet hospital. Our vet had seen Starchild before
for a glass cut, but this time he was far more concerned about
the damage done. He pointed out that she could have very easily
severed her femoral artery, or had run the spear into her upper
chest, both of which would have likely been fatal.
He also went over what her surgery would entail, and the likely
results. He had to go over the worst case scenario with us, saying
the one word I really didn't want to hear: "amputation".
But her true outlook was better than that. A lot of stitches inside
and out, a few weeks taking it easy and maybe she'd even recover
full range of motion in her leg.
Then He gave us the worst news of all, "she's going to have
to say the night in the hospital." I really didn't want to
leave her. She just hates to be left behind... Or is it that I
just hate leaving her behind. I was planning on looking over the
vet's shoulder as he sewed her back up. Maybe give some constructive
guidance, you know, make sure that the vet was doing it right.
I was planning on holding StarChild's paw so that I'd feel better.
But we were sent home instead, leaving StarChild tranquilized,
in a stainless steel cage to await her surgery.
By the morning the news had settled and we were all feeling better
about it. We picked her up promptly, anxious to be with our wounded
little furball. At the hospital there was a happy reunion. She
wagged her tail and even strutted a bit before quickly settling
back down into a wounded daze. I lifted her, carefully placed her
in the car and took her home.
She's been getting better ever since.
Star child after running into a pointy log at full sprint. Unfortunately,
the log won, resulting in a self imposed shish-kabob. Elizabethan
collar by MWI. $20.
The black sutures are to close the wound, whereas the blue sutures
rejoin the torn muscles. The stick speared through her leg at her
knee, barely missing her femoral artery.
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