Will begin by saying that I read crgcpro’s post on Jul 26, about his mosquito and varicose vein incident and was glad he was ok. I had never heard of such an incident and did not give it a second thought.
This past Tue morning, I was out back trimming some new sucker grow from around one of our crape myrtles with limb pruners. I was on one knee working close to the ground. I moved to the other side of the plant and began trimming. I looked back where I had moved from and noticed some blood on the ground. My first thought was what the hell was this, because I had only been at work for a couple of minutes.
When I stood up, I saw that blood was running down my lower left leg and into my shoe. I examined my leg and determined that I had somehow nicked a varicose vein the same as crgcpro. Went around to the garage and got one of my relatively clean golf towels and headed for the garden hose. I got the bleeding stopped in about 10 minutes and called my wife to let her know what had happened. She was with two retired nurses and they indicated that I needed to go to the doctor and get it checked to avoid possible infection.
I was not going anywhere until I shaved and showered. Headed inside and shaved and was finishing in the shower when I noticed that leg had started bleeding again. I thought no big deal but then had trouble stopping the bleeding. A wet wash cloth is not the best item to try and stop bleeding with. I could not leave the shower without getting blood everywhere. I was able to reach my cell phone, called my wife and told her what had happened and that I needed some help. I sat down in the shower and applied pressure with the wash cloth for about 15 minutes until she got home. With her help was able to get the bleeding stopped. After getting dressed, headed to the doc in a box where they cauterized the vein, applied a pressure bandage and told me to take it easy for 24 hours. Don’t think my incident was as bad as pro’s but was an inconvenience.
That brings us to this morning. I’m out back pulling weeds from around the shrubs before I cut the back yard. I’m down on all fours and realize that my right hand is approximately 12 inches from a small copperhead. The snake was approximately 14 inches long. I’m guessing that it was under the pine straw and I uncovered it when I removed some of the weeds.
In about 1/1000 of a second, I completed a situation assessment while putting distance between the snake and my hand and determining it was going to die. I was using a 5 gallon bucket to put weeds in and I placed it over the snake to keep the dogs away from it while I went to the garage and retrieved a shovel. Once back on scene, I applied the shovel to the snakes head and sent him to his maker. Needless to say, once I went back to weeding, everything looked like a snake.
I’m now finished with the yard work for the day. Have showered, taken a lortab for my knee’s, drinking a beer and watching golf.
Can’t wait for next week! 🌫
