Hazards of hunting
THESE dogs are getting trigger-happy. Hardly have we digested the news of the dog who shot his owner up the backside with a shotgun while hunting duck in the state of Utah, in the US, when we get another report of a dog badly wounding his owner with a rifle.
In this second case the owner and a buddy were out hunting deer in Florida. They were driving on a rough dirt road, the rifle and the dog between them in the cab.
As in the earlier case, the dog was overcome with excitement and began jumping around. Next thing it bumped the rifle which went off, wounding the driver in the thigh. He needed surgery and is in a bad way.
It reminds me so much of the case of the Poison Dwarf and his bull terrier bitch, Jezzie. No, Jezzie didn't shoot her owner but she played an integral part in events that were to follow.
The Poison Dwarf (a man I played rugby with for many years) was at a guinea fowl shoot at Otto's Bluff, outside Maritzburg. They were having a tea break. The Poison Dwarf was using an old-fashioned hammer shotgun. As he sipped his tea, he had the barrels of the shotgun pressed against his boot and he leaned on the butt.
Somebody walked by wearing a chunky jersey. He brushed a bit close and the jersey lifted one of the hammers.
Whammo! The shotgun blasted a hole in the Poison Dwarf's boot.
They got the boot off him and discovered his middle toe had been severed completely. They put a tourniquet on him and put him in the cab of a bakkie to rush him to Grey's Hospital.
Somebody threw the toe into the back of the bakkie in case it could be stitched on. The faithful Jezzie jumped on the back as it took off.
Looking in his rear view mirror, the driver then saw the faithful Jezzie swallowing the Poison Dwarf's toe. No stitch-on. But a contented bull terrier. To this day, the Poison Dwarf leaves a distinctive footprint on the beach.
Yes, field sports have their unanticipated hazards.
Witches' coven
WORKMEN in Lancashire, England, have dug up a 17th century cottage which is believed to have had some connection with the Witches of Pendle.
Sealed into one of the walls they found a mummified cat, which heightens the probability of the Witch connection because cats played an important role in witchcraft. It could have been entombed there alive as part of the dreadful stuff the witches did.
The workmen had been excavating deep to put in water reticulation infrastructure. Archaeologists are now swarming over the site, describing it as "Lancashire's Pompeii".
The Witches of Pendle were the focus of a celebrated witchcraft trial in the 17th century. They had nothing to do with the feminist movement.
Seal drops in
STAFF AT THE Society for the Protection of Animals thought their caller had been celebrating Christmas a bit early when she insisted she had a seal sitting on the sofa of her living room.
But New Zealander Annette Swoffer was not squiffy. Sure enough, she had a newly weaned seal pup sitting there on a cushion with her cats.
The seal had left the sea at Bay of Plenty, crawled along a busy road then up Mrs Swoffer's driveway, through a cat flap and into the house. The cats set up a yowling and it was then that Mrs Swoffer came downstairs to investigate.
"I thought I was hallucinating," she says. "There was this seal sitting with my cats. It looked at me with those lovely brown eyes. It seemed perfectly at ease. I had a bit of trouble convincing the SPA people."
A conservation officer and police managed to coax the seal into a net, then released it into the harbour.
We're not told what programme was on TV at the time the seal settled in as a couch potato. Animal Planet?
Tailpiece
HOW DO YOU get a sweet little 80-year-old lady to cuss like a sailor?
You get another sweet little 80-year-old lady to yell: "Bingo!"
Last word
I have never met a man so ignorant that I couldn't learn something from him.
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