Well it was a sad weekend here,we lost a calf.It did not die do to illness but its neck broke. My husband was walking him back to the barn over the gravel drive way and the calf slipped ,hubby grabed his halter and wham the calf fell hubby pulled and his neck snapped.Talk about shock! If I was not there I never would have believed it ,hubby feels so bad. I wonder if anyone else has ever had freak things happen ,sure have learned from this one no halters.

-- renee oneill{md.} (oneillsr@home.com), July 16, 2001

Answers

Renee,I'm so thankful it was the calf and not your husband that snapped his neck!!!We have had several freak accidents,our Uncle had a massive heart attack in the barn loading chickens for the butcher he died with a chicken under each arm,,my husband slid on the wet grass and tore all the ligaments in his knee,damaged his cartilage.My favorite doeling went over her stall wall breaking her leg in four places and we had to put her down,.A twister took our barn down last fall,150 year old bank barn.A friend of ours was clipping a mini horse for show and the little filly reared and smacked her head on the barn wall,once she came around she was never "right " in the head (kinda simple)What can I say the last name is Murphy!!!!

-- teri (mrs_smurf2000@yahoo.ca), July 16, 2001.

I remember my neighbors bought their niece a beautiful buckskin to keep her out of trouble, her parents had died and she had taken it bad, acting out and all. It was working and the girl absolutely adored that horse. We were loading the horses after a 4-H camp, her horse slipped, broke it's leg, and had to be put down. She went back to getting into trouble, her brother drowned a short time later when he dove in a lake and hit his head, then she died in an accident when she was decapitated. A whole string of freak accidents there. Another horse of another neighbor died when it got loose and hit a car. I was riding a horse when the reigns broke, he bolted and hit a car. That car literally collapsed in half. I flew head over heals to the other side of the road to break my tailbone. Had a cousin jump off a trailer that was only two feet off the ground and broke an arm. I could probably go on with more examples, but you get the idea, this stuff does happen.

-- Epona (crystalepona2000@yahoo.com), July 16, 2001.

Hi renee, so sorry to hear about your calf.I don't have a story about an animal, but I fell off the top of the refrigerator once! Lessons learned....1. always use a ladder when painting behind the fridg. 2. If still too stubborn to use a ladder, make sure you don't use your rear end to open the freezer door!

-- Annie (mistletoe@kconline.com), July 16, 2001.

renee, It does happen. I had a Jacob lamb 2 weeks old get it's head caught in the hay manager. I was in the barn at the time and heard a funny noise but couldn't find anything wrong. While feeding a short time later I found the lamb. I tried mouth to mouth every thing I could think of to bring her back nothing worked. We have had several lambs but ofcourse this one seemed special. The ewe breed back and presented us with another lamb in 6 months. Sorry about your loss and glad your husband was not injured. Linda in Indy

-- Linda in Indy (peacefulvalley3@yahoo.com), July 16, 2001.

Over the last twenty five years on the farm, I think I've seen just about everything and anything happen. But it always seems to be true that the first year especially in any new endeavor ( such as farming,job change, moving, etc) always seems to be the hardest and the most freaky things will happen. Don't get discouraged. Things will improve and experience helps you to cope better. Love!

-- Sandra Nelson (Magin@starband.net), July 16, 2001.

We had a close call on a freak accident this spring. Hubby was rototilling and stepped backward to move away from the tiller and he slipped. His reflex was to put one of his legs out in front of him to balance his backward fall, unfortunately it went into the tines of the tiller. The lucky part was that it caught his jeans instead of his leg and he only ended up with a skinned shin rather than a badly mangled leg. His jeans were ripped and twisted right up tight in it though but he had the presence of mind to immediately hit the bar that controls the blades as it happened. I was standing ten feet away from him and wouldn't have known how to stop the tiller had he not been able to. As it was, I had to help him untangle his jeans from the tiller as he was trying to balance himself on one leg. I have since learned how to turn off any machinery he uses so I can be of some help if it is needed. I realized right afterward how serious this almost was. They say farming is a dangerous profession and this just reminded me. He was working on totally flat ground and was not doing anything he shouldn't have been. It was just one of those things.

-- Colleen (pyramidgreatdanes@erols.com), July 16, 2001.

last week one of our ducks somehow got a string tied around his leg, KNOTTED, at the base above the foot and again around that little claw/toe on the back...again knotted, and tangled onto the kids scooter. The good thing is my son and his friend found her right away, got me, and I cut it off. It was literally digging into her skin. She limped away (hard to tell with a duck), but is fine now.

My grandfather died in a freak accident at the farm when I was a kid. He was hauling fence posts, those old wooden ones, in the bucket of his tractor. He should have known better, but he stepped under the bucket to pick something up, the bottom of the bucket came loose in a freak accident, and crushed his skull and killed him.

As a homebirth midwife in early sanity retirement, I used to joke, "If you want a complication, come to me!" to my friends. I screened carefully, was more cautious than any I knew, had higher protocal standards than physicians, and STILL in spite of everything appearing perfect, I was the one who always got the freak complications, the one that there was no logical explanation for in an otherwise healthy woman. Impossible, but happening all the time.

My beloved dog, as soon as we moved to the country, for the first time in his life chose not to obey me when a car was coming. It was as if he waited for that moment, looked at me and gave his Aussie smile, took off after a rabbit. I knew he would get hit before the car got to our house because I had been so "cursed" by everyone before I moved (oh, he'll get hit!). Sure enough, he got hit as I watched. I had to bury him myself since my husband wasn't here yet. No, it wasn't just moving to the country and finally having something to chase. It was just his first act of open rebellion to me at that squirrely stage of a year and a half.

-- marcee king (thathope@mwt.net), July 16, 2001.

Sorry about the calf, Renee, but everyone does have accidents, sooner or later, I think. A girl I grew up with told me about her older sister and the sister's husband, who were buying a dairy farm. They and their children moved to the farm and were living there before the sale was completed. They had ordered feed, seed, etc. On the day they were to go into town to close the sale, her sons were playing out in one of the pastures, and the husband went out to get them to come in and clean up. The boys lifted a section of irrigation pipe to get a ground squirrel out, just as the husband reached them. Wouldn't you know, they touched a power line with the pipe, and it electrocuted two of the boys and the father, who was close by. They were new to the country, and never gave it a thought...Jan

-- Jan in CO (Janice12@aol.com), July 16, 2001.

I broke my wrist rafting.

Doesn't sound very freakish, does it, until I tell the REST of the story.

It was like 30 degrees, it was October, we had just come off rafting the Upper Gauley (in WV, advanced rapids, cool ride!)

I was wearing a rented wetsuit. Amd trying to get it off, it was cold, and I was standing there in my wet skivvies with the wetsuit down around my ankles and COULDN'T GET IT OFF! I WAS FREEZING! So I stuck my thumbs in either side of the leg near my ankle and jerked down as hard as I could - not realizing that the reason the $*#(@(#*$ thing wasn't coming off was because I had failed to unzip the ankles ... something had to give, and it wasn't the wetsuit.

On another trip the rafting guide managed to hit me in the head with his paddle (got that one on tape). On a houseboat trip, one of the guys accidentally threw a tree at me (we were looking for firewood, he saw a likely looking candidate still standing, said "This one looks dead", gave it a shove and it fell over on me. Gave me a black eye. I spilled a glass - well, styrofoam cup - of red wine down my front and while I lay there dazed he thought it was blood and he'd killed me).

When I was in college, my foot mysteriously went totally numb. The doctor at the student clinic pulled a long face and started mumbling surgery. Having no insurance, I waited 'til the doctor I liked and trusted was on, saw him for the problem. He poked me with a pin here and there, called the nurse in with this big grin on his face and showed her how numb I was, then looked at me and said "You bought a new pair of shoes recently, didn't you? Stop wearing them." He later became my personal physician.

On a ski trip, a guy showing off getting off the lift set the chair swinging, it swung forward and knocked me down face first, and I fell on the camera I had tucked in the upper pocket of my ski jacket. The corner of the camera apparently dug into my chest with sufficient force to tear the cartilage. Had to cross-country to get to the car, and I barely made it. I'd have been better of if I'd broken ribs, the cartilage took forever to heal.

Come to think of it, most of that was with the same group of people. Haven't had a weird accident like that since I quit hanging around with them ... LOL!

-- Sojourner (notime4@summer.spam), July 16, 2001.

This probably is not a freak accident, and it certainly isn't related to the farm topic, but it is one that came to my mind as I was reading other stories you all posted.

My ex-husband had bought a bunch of fishing tackle for an upcoming fishing trip. One huge fish hook got loose in the van and made it's way to the drivers side seat. My hubby promptly sat his skinny little but right down on it. Needless to say it went deep. It was not in a place he could easily reach, or reach at all for that matter. He would not go to the ER and I had to do the operation myself. It (the hook) had to be pushed through all the way and then brought out. It wasn't funny at the time, but now that I look back on it I get great pleasure thinking about how white his face was and how he nearly passed out on several attempts of getting it out. I kinda felt like I was removing an arrow, like in the old western movies. :-) It came out but it took alot of time. Normally I don't get pleasure out of these things, but if you knew my ex-hubby you would understand my sick sense of humor.

-- Carolyn (sweetbabydill@aol.com), July 16, 2001.

About six years ago, my parents and I were putting away Christmas decorations back into the closet. I was on a chair, and we were moving items from the shelf so that the decorations would be placed behind them. Pick up; pass it on to the next person, and so on. I picked up an old slide projector (heavy sucker!), and turned around to give it to Dad, arms fully extended. Dad had turned around and was talking to Mom, and before I could bring the projector back in . . . POP!! goes my shoulder. Didn't hurt much at first, but man did it ever build up in the days after. After three days, went to the doctor and he told me I tore my ligament, bad enough to keep the arm in a sling for two weeks. Happy New Year 1996 J. R. !

-- j.r. guerra (jrguerra@boultinghousesimpson.com), July 17, 2001.

I think this comes under the heading of "Freak accident", A friend of mine "ESTEL" was being a nice guy and pulled his van over and stopped for the school bus to pass him on a narrow road. Little did he know that his tire had slipped off the pavement. When the bus passed and the WHOOSH came afterwards, it tumped him over the embankment, he rolled completely over 360 degrees. With a van full of tools flying around during the exercise, he escaped unscathed. With a little pull out from a friends tractor, he was on his way. There are more "ESTEL" stories if ya'all liked this one. Unfortunatly they are all true. Wayne

-- Wayne & Lyn Roach (R-Way@msn.com), July 19, 2001.

Freak accidents don't always turn out badly. Last fall after we harvested brussel sprouts for market, one of the girls at work and I were riding the trailer back to cold storage. We were both tired and not paying attention to what we were doing, and we both sat in front of the wheels on the trailer, sitting on the side. The other girl lost her balance just a little when we first started off and was pulled under the wheels of the trailer. This trailer had double wheels in the middle, and the leg was pinned between the wheels, so the girl driving the tractor had to back over the girl's legs to get her out. Amazingly, she walked away (or I should say, hobbled away). The sand in the path form fitted around her leg, taking much of the weight. She was quite sore for awhile, but nothing was broken, just badly bruised. We all ride behind the wheels now!

-- Sheryl in ME (radams@sacoriver.net), July 19, 2001.