Its not a huge issue with my hands, Advil makes them work again and a few minutes every morning going through some exercises my PT gave me and they do mostly fine. The biggest problem I have with them is that I know they have problems, it makes it easy to make excuses and whine, as well as the aforementioned placebo effect… Is it really just practice, or will my hands simply not do it? Obviously the answer is its practice, they aren’t crippled or anything, just stiff and painful. When I hit 40, well, we’ll see where I’m at, but for now? Its just me whining more than anything too literal.
So… the raccoon. Ever heard the term degloved? If you have a decent stomach, hit up google with that. I had my pointer finger and thumb degloved on my left hand as well as over (literally) 120 teeth punctures, having the tip of the middle finger torn off along with the nail (could see the bone), lacerated muscles, shredded nerves and skin. It was interesting. And crazily? Didn’t hurt at all, even after there wasn’t a lot of pain, but the feeling of the gauze touching exposed muscle and such on the degloved portion is a feeling I don’t know how to describe and will never forget. And in the end? The damn raccoon died.
For anyone that cares, the story is as follows:
Was 20, at the time I owned a recording studio alongside my cousin. We made no money except bills so I had a night job and was staying with my Mom when i didn’t just sleep in the studio. I was at my Mom’s house sleeping. I had worked the night prior and we had a night-session at the studio coming up so I was trying to get as much rest as I could. It was 1-2pm. I wake up to my Mom and Brother going batshit yelling about a raccoon in the back yard (she lived in a neighborhood, very residential, so raccoons are rarely seen) and wanting me to help it. I wake up bleary eyed and confused, cause, ya know, its day time and in my 17 years in that house had never seen a raccoon in that neighborhood before. Also, wtf do I have to do with it?
Well, I get to the backyard and see what the issue was. Our neighbors mixed-but-mostly-pitbull-looking dog had treed the raccoon in this skinny Water Maple sapling that was maybe 15-20ft tall, but skinny. Skinny enough that the top of the tree where the raccoon was was leaning over a little bit under its weight. Not like crazily, gonna break leaning, but it had some tilt. The point being the tree wouldnt hold a fdull grown man trying to climb it. I was in good shape then, so I was about 195-200, no way was the tree holding me.
My mind doesn’t work like a normal person’s mind. Honestly, based on past decisions, my mind doesn’t work much at all. I saw all this, bleary eyed and sun-blinded, and came to the TOTALLY logical conclusion that I needed to save the raccoon. Not by chasing the dog off so it could run, oh no. But by CATCHING the god damn thing so I could relocate it. I was thinking "Man, this thing could hurt my cats, or smaller dogs, or get killed by that dog, or shot by someone… I dunno, I think I should CATCH IT and I can release it into a more wilderness-y area. I settled on a plan super quick too, which was a bad sign.
Lemme just start by giving you all a list of what I asked for… I told my Mom and Brother to go get me:
Extension cord. Our big-■■■ orange one.
Cat carrier.
Oven mits.
Towels.
Hamburger Meat.
Step Ladder.
Yep. Here is how I envisioned this going down: I throw the extension cord around limb raccoon is clinging too and let it down so I can grab the end I threw over, looping it, more or less. My brother was to use the step ladder to help with this. We then throw the hamburger to the dog to distract it. Now, I’m bending the limb on my side of the yard (this tree grew right on the fence line), but I do still want the dog quiet and ideally not right on top of me while I do this. I would then have my brother bend the limb slowly down until I had the raccoon low enough to grab while standing on the ladder. I would position the cat carrier on its end, door up and open. Once the raccoon was in range, Id throw the towel around it while simultaneously grabbing it by the scruff of the neck and kinda throwing it straight down into the carrier. My FLAWLESS ■■■■■■■ plan being to restrict its limbs with the towel and head by grabbing the scruff. The oven mitts were to protect my hands, but had to be abandoned because I couldn’t do all this with them on like I had hoped.
That was my plan. THAT is what a normally healthy, mentally functional 20yr old came up with. That was my BEST plan.
Everything set up fine… Everything was going to plan, I had this. Then, oh, a few inches from being in position to grab, the limb snapped. Directly above my face. The raccoon fell directly on my face. Face. Mine. My face. At this exact moment, the raccoon also went Super Saiyan.
I haven’t mentioned previously just how big a raccoon this was either. I didn’t realize it until it was about to fall on my face, but it was huge. I don’t mean fisherman story huge where time and the telling has added a few lbs. No. I had the ■■■■■■■■ body and took it to the ER with me. He weighed in at 21lbs. Thats a big. ■■■■■■■. raccoon.
So… Super Saiyan, methed out, batshit, raccoon falls on my face. ■■■■■ the plan, its gone. I reach up to pull him off my face and I can literally see his teeth snapping shut about an inch from my eye. Thankfully all my face got were scratches. Meth-coon decides that my left hand is the enemy here and just goes to town on it. Me being made of the physical manifestation of stupidity however, is NOT thinking about saving himself. Oh no. That would make sense. I am thinking about how best to remedy the situation BY GETTING THE ■■■■■■■ RACCOON IN THE CAT CARRIER. So… I try to grab him with him right had, no luck, I basically fall off the ladder and the damn raccoon and I go rolling around on the ground. Him determined to eat my left hand (he really just kinda stuck to that hand…) me determined to somehow get him in the carrier. After what felt like a long time but was probably more like 20 seconds or so, it finally dawns on me, when I see the tip of my middle finger ON THE GRASS, that I need to stop trying to save the raccoon and try now, to save my hand. At this point my hand didnt really work any more, I couldnt move any fingers or anything. Or so it seemed, and he has me by my pointer finger and thumb and doing a great impression of a crocodile/pit-bull hybrid by spinning his body and ripping his head back and forth. I can see grass and raccoon fur sticking out of holes in my hand where his teeth have punctured and pushed the crap into the wounds. I was never panicking or freaking out, I was fighting this ■■■■■■■ like a lunatic, but it wasnt flailing, it was just a back and forth of me trying to get my hand away and a grip on him somehow and get him to the carrier… The whole time I knew how much damage (well, not really, I had a weird idea that it was WAY worse and WAY better than it was) he was doing and I just kept saying ‘Nope dumbass, you brought this situation this far, save the damn thing or its all been wasted’… I even thought I had lost my middle finger by now, but I was still pissed and trying to make the situation work. By now everything was covered in blood, my brother is screaming, my Mom was calling me stupid, and screaming, and yelling she hoped the damn thing killed me because I was making a fool of myself, and that damn raccoon just WOULD NOT let go. I finally had to admit defeat and stop trying to get him in the carrier. I had gotten him halfway in twice, but he was obviously fighting with all four limbs AND his face full of razers. His claws had torn both my arms up pretty good (dr’s said there would be life-long scarring,. but nothing of the sort happened except in places on my left hand), along with my shirt. AND AND AND! My cousin had arrived, unbeknownst to me, right about the time things went south, so he was just watching horror-stricken from the gate.
After all my hard work and sacrifice - had I just thrown him off me when he fell on me Id have gotten maybe ONE bite and some scratches - I had to stop trying to catch him and concentrate on saving my damn hand… He would not let go and I was starting to legit worry I was going to loose two more fingers. I still thought I had lost my middle finger, it was broken at a weird angle and I had seen the tip and nail off to the side, I thought the ■■■■■■■ ate it, and to my idiotic mind, one finger was ok, since I chose to instigate this mess, not him, but three was too much. I need those fingers. He just wouldnt not give them back though. I tried pushing my hand IN to his mouth, trying to force the jaws open (its super hard to make yourself do that btw, every sense you have is screaming PULL BACK!) or make him gag… Nothing doing. If I just blindly tried to rip my hand out of his mouth I have NO DOUBT, id have lost my pointer and thumb. So… sigh. I used my left hand to kind of drag him into a decent position and started punching him. That didn’t do much. Sharp, pointy ■■■ skull, so I resorted to hammer fisting him in the top of the head… which didn’t work either… So, I did the only thing I could think of at that time, and hammer fisted the base of his skull where I imagined his spine was attached and on the second one, something gave. He made a really weird snarl/yelp (btw, this entire time he is making the most INSANE noises) immediately lets go and kinda turns halfway around and just falls down. He died pretty much right then.
Fast forward a bit and I’m at the ER, I almost lost consciousness due to blood loss, with a dead raccoon FINALLY in the damn cat carrier. I’ve realized my fingers have been degloved, I still have all of them, three are broken, I have a million bites, they are re-attaching the tip that was removed (or were about to) and the entire damn staff has either been in or stopped by to see me and oggle at what I’ve done to myself and I was SOO down. They all thought it was because my hand looked like Baghdad , but I was genuinely (and still am somewhat to this day) disgusted with myself for managing to kill that raccoon who, had I left alone, would have been alright. At least for a while. Thoroughly disgusted with myself over that.
Annndddd - that’s my raccoon story. I also had to get rabies shots after just in case, even though the raccoon tested negative. These were the older type that went in to the lining of your stomach. yay! 100+ stitches, three surgeries, lots of regrown skin and time later, all that’s left are little scars and a middle finger that doesn’t bend right, has weird feeling from the first knuckle up and a slightly lopsided look.
Orchid then.