Wild Stories

Or Stories in the wilds-

The first story my wife and I were laughing about tonight. Often when someone almost dies it can be funny if you survive it. This was one of those.

We were out in the wilds near Lake Siskiyou up stream which is near the little City of Mt. Shasta. You drive across Box Canyon Dam which dams up the lake and then go upstream up the Sacramento River Tributaries there. If you went several miles further you would have been a Gumboot lake.

So, we were way up one of the mountain tributaries of the Sacramento River when this happened one summer day. We had been exploring along the river because it is very beautiful and wild there. My youngest daughter who is about 20 now was 4 or 5 then. So, my older daughter who was there I believe was 7 years older so about 12 when this happened.

My wife started screaming as I climbed the face of the cliff next to the river up to the road from walking along the stream. My wife was up on top of the cliff where the paved mountain road was and our car was and she started screaming and jumping around on top of the edge of the cliff because a hornet had gotten under her sandal and was repeatedly stinging her. So, she was beyond being in a normal practical place where she usually is.

I'm pretty good during emergencies because I can always shut off my emotions and I get very quick and practical in all my actions. I have always been this way and my father and grandfather were all like this too.

So, I realized the biggest danger was not the hornets stinging her but the fact that she might fall off the cliff to her death if she stayed in this state. So, I scrambled quickly to the top of the cliff while she was screaming and told her forcefully,

"Give me your foot!" So, she had to sit down to do this. I ripped off her sandal and stuck her foot into my mouth to suck out the poison of the hornet after I killed it. This wasn't hard because it was slightly mashed under her sandal straps already.

So, I sucked the poison out of multiple bites between her toes and it made my tongue numb so I could barely talk the rest of the afternoon (even though I kept spitting out the hornet poison I was sucking out of her toes). But, for my wife it took most of the pain immediately away and prevented her from getting sick from so many bites from a hornet all at once.

So, then the whole family was laughing by this time because my wife was so very funny going through all this and I had kept her from hopping and screaming over the cliff to her death.

So, it's stories like this that are crazy that you survive that are amazing to think back upon because they are just so crazy and unexpected at the time.