Greyhound flesh stripper
Oooh I love telling people this one.

I didn't see it coming up behind me, but it must have been running full tilt when it jumped me, punch of paws on one shoulder, claws into the back of my neck on the other side.

We had been waiting for a club to open, enjoying the August evening, the year I left school.

Now I was sprawled brokenly on the pavement with a stinking, sweat-streaked greyhound astride my chest, snapping at my face and tearing through my clothes.

Wee Johnny bottled it. Crunch. Right between the eyes.

In the ambulance I kept shouting about my face, my left eye was an impossible boiling ant-hill of pain and I thought the dog had torn my cheek away.

One of it's paws had cracked the orbit of my eye. Heavy dog. But my scraped and swollen face was not what prompted the hospital porter to grey, sway, and leave the room. I looked across the trolley-bed to where my hand should have been. The dog had lopped off my thumb.

Not neatly, not the punctuated shock of an absent digit, the bite had laid my palm open and pulled my thumb bones out like an anatomist's frog.

The metacarpal bone protruded from a stripped and splintered mess of flesh and pulpy, ruined muscle. They can't stitch a wound like that. It looked like a chicken thigh, pulled apart and positively marinated in claret.

Doctors don't like to amputate a thumb. Thumbless people have all sorts of difficulty. Thumbs fascilitate such varied tasks as typing, playing with an etch-a-sketch, and peeling an orange independently. I begged them not to amputate.

And that's how I ended up with the recognisable pieces of my thumb bound in sterile gauze, and sternly warned that if it started to rot, it had to come off.

I cleaned it, dressed it, wept over it, swore at it, cleaned it again aand after several weeks I was able to start physio. Rehabilitation for moveing and stretching. My favourite exercise was one I re-named the 'Pick it, flick-it, stick-it' manoeuvre.

It didn't fester, and have a truly Frankenstein-esque scar where the flesh knit naturally. Never got the feeling back though. Numb as a thumb.

Next time you walk past the bookie's window and see a glorious photo-finish poster of slavering, razor-jawed psyco-hounds closing in on the hare; think of my poor bloody thumb... and look behind you.

Length? It could have ended up just a little bit shorter.
(hahasnakes, Tue 29 Apr 2008, 20:06, 4 replies)

Yikes!
*clicks with thumb, just because it's possible*
( Enzyme is powered by sunlight, Tue 29 Apr 2008, 21:40, closed)

What happened to the dog after?
Was it put down or did the bottling see to that?
( M o D, Tue 29 Apr 2008, 22:12, closed)

Fate of the Dog:
It lived at least another 2 years. The dog belonged to a vagrant middle-aged punk who was rather infamous in my area. The whack on the head apparently did not harm it, when I moved 2 years later it was still alive (and vicious).
(hahasnakes, Wed 30 Apr 2008, 0:09, closed)

I love most animals
but I believe I'd have taken a baseball/cricket bat to the fucker until it was dead (once you were better). Things like that don't deserve to live, nor does the owner come to that.

Glad your thumb survived even if it is a bit different now!
(Lurkaloid awarded wanking black belt on, Wed 30 Apr 2008, 3:43, closed)