Did something dumb today.

[doc henderson]

when we had a dog kill a chicken, it gets duck taped to the back of the dog for a few hours.  our German Shepard would still stalk but would not touch.

[Jeff]

That sounds kinda like the story my dad told about a dog his dad had that would chase deer. He put the dog and a deer hide in a barrel and rolled it down the hill that dropped down to the little salt river flats. The dog apparently thought the deer was kicking his butt and he never chased another deer.

[Magicman]

When I was "growing up" back in the 50's there were no deer on our property, but there was a herd of wild goats.  All different colors and when I say wild, I mean WILD.  If any goat saw suspicious movement the only thing left would be their stink when they fled.  You had to approach from downwind and hopefully find the herd by spotting a white one.

A very careful stalk was necessary to get close enough to pop a nanny with the .22 rifle.  During those years that was our source of "wild" meat, and the .22 was the only rifle that we had.

[SawyerTed]

About 15 years ago some undisciplined goats jumped out of a truck a couple of miles from here.  The owner had just bought them and was hauling them in a truck with a stake bed enclosure.  Only thing wrong with that was there was no top.  Needless to say the goats jumped and ran.

After a week or so they took up with our cows.  That wasn't a problem as long as the cows were at pasture but when the cows came to the barn to be fed during the winter it was a different story.  The goats got in the barn, chewed through strings on hay bales, pooped indiscriminately and tore up the feed sacks.

My brother-in-law handled the barn operations and was at his wits end on what to do with the goats.  He finally took me up on the offer to dispose of them after animal control and the animal rescue folks failed to capture them.

Little did I know how hard they were to hunt!  They were subsequently processed and given to some neighbors for roasting. 

[WV Sawmiller]

   When we first moved here to WV we bought 4 goats to clear the multiflora roses that had taken over before we bought the place. We had strung a haphazard electric fence thinking it would hold them. Wrong. They immediately escaped. About a month later a neighbor caught one and tied up at our place and she had a kid a few weeks later. About 6-7 months later a neighbor asked me if I was still missing goats and I told him yes - 3 of them. He said they were hanging out with his ponies at an old farm house about half a mile or so up the mountain. The road was impassable for vehicles up to it but we walked up and found 2 of our goats both with kids they had had over the winter. I met the owner of the place and he allowed me to use an old log shed as a trap so I set a falling door and figure  4 trigger and caught them and we gentled them down and later sold them. The one goat we never found was brown and I assume someone shot her for a deer. When building a fence to hold goats use the water test - if it will hold water it will hold a goat. if not it won't. Pretty near true.

[firefighter ontheside]

I put up 4' field fence and two strands of barbed wire up to 6'.  Amazingly they have not gotten out in the 5 years I have had them.  They are troublemakers though.  The other day I noticed my chickens were troubled by something.  I looked into the pop door for the coop and saw hooves.  My big fat goats had gotten into the coop thru a door that is about 10"x12".  It seemed impossible, but they were in there.  Ate all the chicken food.

[WDH]

You can BBQ a possum too, but I don't.  A man has to make choices . 

[Ianab]

You can BBQ a possum too, but I don't.  A man has to make choices .

Slow cooker, with a heap of curry. 
We have a native bird called a Pukeko (swamp hen). Instructions for cooking one is to put it in a pot with am axe head to weight it down. When the axehead is tender, throw away the pukeko and eat the axe.  :D
Our Opossums are the Aussie variety, and actually edible in pinch. Never been that hungry though. 

[SawyerTed]

It seems like I do dumb stuff with some regularity.  For a very long time I have been compelled by some overblown sense of pride to keep the dumb stuff I do to myself.  

So this thread is "therapetic" (Barney called it that).  

Latest dumb thing - after doing some routine maintenance under the hood of my Ram 3500, I was closing the hood.  So I reached up and pulled the hood latch loop by inserting two fingers in the loop. The hood came down faster than I expected. I did get my fingers clear of the latch but didn't get my hand out of the hood.  Yep the hood closed and latched on my right hand. It took a couple of minutes to free myself.  All I cloud think about was Red Forman from That 70's Show..... 

[samandothers]

SawyerTed,
Don't know why but that story reminded me a one dad would tell about a gentleman.  The incident happened when dad was a kid, late 20's.  A man was working in his field with horse and wagon and was jumping out of the wagon to the ground.  This is something routine as we may jump from the back of a truck.  As he did he grabbed the side of the wagon with his hand and jumped over the side rail. When he did this the tip of a finger went into a knot hole.  So this left the man standing on the ground with the end of his finger protruding out of the knot hole and unable to jump back up into the wagon.  Being afraid the horse would move off and not having anyone around to help him he resorted to using his pocket knife to remove the end of his finger so he could get his hand free.   Don't know if it was true or not but he told it several times.

Glad your truck did not run off!

[doc henderson]

great lesson, hopefully not true!  :D

[SawyerTed]

That's the funniest thing I've heard in a while! :D

Not the man cutting his finger off -  ouch!  I'm glad it wasn't a horse and wagon too!

When my son was 3 or 4 he was my right hand man (still is he's 29).  I was spreading fertilizer on our pastures.  There was a pallet of 50 pound bags in the bed of my pick up truck.  My son was "helping" load the spreader from the back of the truck.  My wife was also around helping watch the kids by the way.  My son saw me jump out of the truck to get on the tractor.  So after I drove off he thought he would jump like dad did.  I turned around and saw him dangling from the corner of the tailgate from the seat of his pants.  He decided it was cool before I got back to free him.  When I got over to him he yelled, "Look Dad!  I'm Superman!"   :D :D :D

I felt like Dumb and Dumber (where one character put his tongue on a frozen metal pole) standing there in front of my truck with my hand stuck in the hood.

[doc henderson]

the trick is learning the lesson without permanent injury or death.  sometimes just dumb luck. smiley_swinging_board smiley_carpenter_hit_thumb :snowball1: :snowfight1:

[moosehunter]

This was a few weeks ago.
I was putting in a drainage ditch to get water to flow under my driveway instead of over it. Some years the ice has been over a foot deep!
The 100 amp service to my garage goes across where I needed the drain. Not really a problem because I knew where the wire was because I put it there. 18 years ago. I dug my 36" deep ditch until I got to where the wire was (supposed to be) then I slowed way down and dug about an inch at a time with the backhoe. I figured that was safe because I had put tracer tape over the wire. Find the tracer tape, do a little hand digging then go back to digging with the backhoe at full speed. 
Well, I dug 8 feet or so to full depth and didn't find the wire. Maybe it's deeper than I remembered? Just to be safe I dug another 8 feet at a painfully slow pace looking for the wire. It's not there. It must be deeper than I remembered. Good, I gotta get this ditch done before I lose daylight so of I go at full speed. 
 You guessed it, the wire was at the depth I thought, just about 15 feet from where I was sure it was. 
  Luckily I have a friend at the local professional electric supply house. He fixed me up with what I needed to fix my mistake. Took me about 2.5 hours in 15 degree weather after work the following night to get the service back to my garage. 

mh

[Ljohnsaw]

I felt like Dumb and Dumber (where one character put his tongue on a frozen metal pole)

Fond memories!  When I was about 9 or 10 (youngest of 7 kids in 9 years), my oldest brother was about 16 or 17?  He was always doing all sorts of experiments.  

He screwed together some half inch steel pipe with a little brass valve on one end.  Before he put a cap on the other end, he put some dry ice in it.  Not sure what he was trying to do - maybe make a co2 fire extinguisher?  Anyhow, it got really frosted up.  So he touched his tongue to it.  Yep, froze the tip right to it! :  I remember my mom pouring warm water over his tongue while leaning over the kitchen sink.   He was tugging pretty hard and I think he lost a few taste buds in that one. :D

Another one was (with the help of my dad) filling dry cleaners bags with natural gas (stove gas) and sending the balloons aloft with streamers and such.  Pretty neat.  Got the bright idea to do one at night.  Counter balance with a piece of coat hanger (plastic IIRC) on one end and a never-go-out birthday candle on the other.  What could go wrong? : We set it free in the back yard and up it goes.  Over our house into the front yard.  Up a couple hundred feet.  Way cool!  Then it rolled over and was engulfed in a massive ball of flame!  Came crashing down in the middle of the street, a puddle of burning plastic.  Neighbors thought it was a UFO or something.

[Nebraska]

@firefighter otheside 20 or so years I built a pen I called "goat knox " 8 strands of hightensile fencing every other wire hot. Worked great til one day after a thunderstorm the goats were up in the yard helping themselves to lilac bushes, fruit trees, and whatever else they found irresistible. Lightening had burnt the yard light wire in two and blown the fuses out of their holder on the electric fencer.  It looked impressive to me.... three years ago It was replaced with combination livestock panels with board stiffners between posts and a hot wire around the top. It hasn't been breached yet. As long as I remember to chain the gate that is. :

[firefighter ontheside]

I let the goats out to eat today.  I guess they weren't finding a lot with the new snow on the ground.  So they kept going in the garage.  One of them went under my truck and got stuck.  I had to crawl under there and pull him out.

[doc henderson]

when we lived out in Fort Hays Ks, we had about 60 chickens, ducks and geese.  the neighbors Labrador would carry them home and bury them live in the garden.  I had an answering machine and would get the message that their dog brought them a duck and it was in the garage and I could just come and get it when I got home.

[Chuck White]

I would have told them to return it after all, they caused it to be taken! :-\ 

[doc henderson]

I did eventually tell them that, but I think they thought they "got out"  and it was usually the same dog.  told them they could just drive by and toss it into the yard, and they were happy to do that.  is was a group of houses out in the country with about 50 families and everyone watched out for each other.  if I burned a bunch of cedar limbs or something, 2 or 3 cars would drive by.  we were on the back of the group and not seen by others easily.  they were just making sure we did not have a fire and in need of help.   and of course I worked a ton and usually got home after 9 pm.

[SawyerTed]

I'm sure I've put the neighbor's cows back in the pasture a dozen times in the last few years.  It's what neighbors do for each other here.

We have a neighbor who brings my dog home after the dog goes to visit. Of course my neighbor loves my dog so she brings the dog home after they ride to the store, visit her sister and have a sleepover.  I usually get a call from my neighbor that my dog is visiting.  Used to happen once or twice a month.  Now not so often.

What did I do dumb today?  I got into an online discussion with a troll.....duh.

[Old Greenhorn]

Well I really qualified today. The holiday break started last night for me and after a late music gig last night I got out as early as I could this morning to start in the shop. First task, clean off the bench and remove a sheet of 5/8" plywood that is going to be a tool board, and cut about a foot off so that it won't interfere with a floor joist later. Cleared the bench and removed all the tapcons holding the sheet up. it stays in place. (?) So I get a shim bar and begin lifting it away from the wall. It is jammed between the sheet above it and the board below it. I work my way across the bottom, peeling it away very cautious that the whole thing could drop. I get the entire bottom edge out and just hanging. It is still not falling. Now I have a good grip on the bottom edge with both hands because I know the weight. Shake, shimmy, nothing. I relax my grip and remove my right hand followed by my left as I am thinking "what the ..... WHAM!! Down it came. About a 8" drop. I had not gotten my left hand fully out and there was no time to apply any grip. It crushed my index and middle finger. My index kind of exploded and the middle finger just took a direct hit. I don't ever recall feeling that kind of pain. No, I am not laughing yet. I got the glove off hoping all my fingers were still attached, and there was a fair amount of blood so I could not see much, but I could feel ........ A LOT. I headed across the yard to the house and asked the wife between gasps for some ice. I was fighting the urge to pass out and/or throw up. It took 20 minutes before I got control of my senses.
 It's one of those things that is worse than it looks.


 

I bandaged up the index finger so I could work but the middle finger did not burst so it is swollen tight. The index is getting better, but that middle one is very sensitive and when I touch something the wrong way it all comes back.
 i followed the blood trail back to the shop (pretty on the frozen snow) and got the sheet down, cut it off,put it back up and rehung it. All good now.


 
 But man, this pain isn't really going away none too fast and I got really tired, so I came in to take a break. Started at 10 degrees this morning, not ready to run the mill yet, it's only up to 20 now. Maybe I'll just rest for a bit before I go back at it. 
 Man that was dumb.

[WV Sawmiller]

OGH,

  Sorry about the boo boo! Looks painful. Brings back memories of similar times. I have a bottle of excess pain pills left over my dentist gave me the last time he drilled a post in my jaw for a future implant that I had been thinking of throwing away but after looking at your digits there I think I may just keep them a little longer for contingencies like that. 

[SawyerTed]

Oooowwwiee wooowwwsser!  I pinched off a hemorrhoid just thinking about that!  Gosh I hope you feel better soon!  I mashed two of my fingers working firewood in March.  One is fine the other is still recovering.  

[samandothers]

OUUCH!  I mighta uttered ugly comments if that had occurred here.