The Mauling

We did have a slight incident between being sick and getting the car fixed.  The plan for the day was to take a relaxing trip out to Lover's Point to build Monkey a sand castle.  Nothing went according to plan, again documented at Banana Bum.  Besides the bacteria, seaweed refuse, and general inhospitality of the place that day, we thought we could at least feed the squirrels in peace.

Apparently the squirrels at Lover's Point are even tamer than I remembered.  All you have to do is call to them and twenty will come out of the rocks to partake of the proffered goodies.  The way they sat in our laps, rifled through our bags and crowded around in gangs was almost intimidating.  We thought we might have a theme for a new Hitchcock movie.  Still, it was all good until one - the felonious rodent pictured - got quite overexcited and decided to drag away my little finger.

I'd been bitten once before by a nervous young squirrel, but this was much worse.  Bev managed to beat him off, but not before he'd crunched on my knuckle several times.  The wound bled profusely for several minutes as we rummaged for the first aid supplies.  The squirrels didn't seem to comprehend the emergency and continued to crowd around gawking at us, getting blood dripped on them for their trouble.  We considered running by the hospital, but we didn't happen to have the GPS with us at the time, and I wasn't sure how to get there from the beach.

It was a long walk back to the car.  Bev drove home while I applied pressure and a Kleenex.  By the time we made it home to retrieve the GPS, the bleeding had stopped and we elected to just sanitize it ourselves with rubbing alcohol.  The dread associated with the possibility of an unnecessary rabies vaccination did factor into the decision.

It took a week and some days, but the wound healed without incident and my finger has made a full recovery.  Now I have a nice "T" shaped scar.  The moral of the story is to keep your extra fingers out of reach at all times.