Saturday 24th January 2015
Pete and Toby have
matching amputations…
Coincidence? Must be!!
Pete lost his in a farm accident, maybe twenty years ago. His finger got stuck between some portable gates
and it was all very unpleasant. Toby’s
loss was much more dramatic, to a Tasmanian at least. He lost his finger to – a rattlesnake bite!
His grandmother
killed a rattlesnake which had been eating the chickens on her ranch. She handed it over to Toby, quite dead but
not, unfortunately, beheaded…. Not one to let a good rattlesnake go to waste, Toby
set to work skinning and filleting it.
But he forgot about the head, and the fangs, and he jammed one of the
fangs right into his finger. By the time
a friend had driven him (FAST!) to the hospital his whole arm was swollen, and
his finger felt as if someone was banging it with a heavy hammer, every five
seconds or so. NOT fun! The doctors used all of the antivenin in Albuquerque
and he loved to tell the tale, but lost the top of his finger. Apparently, says Toby, 98% of rattlesnake
envenomisations (his work; he is a paramedic and should know!) occur
postmortem. Live rattlesnakes won’t
waste their valuable venom on something as big as a human, they will just strike
and bite as a warning, without emptying their poison sacs.
Yesterday I bought
a new simcard and phone top-up from my local shop. There are not many Muslims in Coron, but this
shop is Muslim owned and run, by an exceedingly friendly brother and sister
combo. My veiled friend was thrilled to
see me back in town and was very cross that I hadn’t rung her from the airport –
she would have picked us up! In her
van! For a BIG discount!
 |
| Rosei an Toby in sunset glow |
Toby and Pete have
gone into town, to get tickets for Toby and Rosie on the 2Go ferry to Manila
for tomorrow, and to borrow some extra diving equipment. We will maybe do two, or even three, dives
today, close by. Of course I don’t want
to go…I NEVER want to go diving. But…as
soon as I am down there, with my fishy friends, I am rapt and thrilled and full
of enthusiasm.
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