You wouldn't read about it! :(
On Sunday afternoon I noticed that the bloke six doors down had a sign out "Give away - large cactus". Now SWMBO is a cacti collector so I figured I'd score some brownie points and grab it. :)
Most cacti are little things that resemble a spiky green ping pong ball in a pot the size of a jam jar. This one however was 2.5M high and looked a lot like the ones in the western movies. :cool: It was tied, no, leashed to one of the trees in the yard. Its usual place of residence was tied to one of the columns by the entrance way. It was tied up because the 4 litre pot it grew in wasn't heavy enough to keep it upright.
So this morning after breakfast I walked the 150 odd metres down the road with a trolley and a rope. The bloke lifted the pot with one hand and the cactus with the other whilst I tied it to the trolley. Then holding the trolley with one hand and the cactus with the other I headed back down the road. I had newspaper wrapped around the cactus where I held it because that's he only way to keep the spikes at bay, they'll go straight through a leather rigger's glove.
There's no footpaths around here so I walked on the road, ocasionally getting off onto the bumpy dirt and gravel edge to make way for the morning traffic. As I got off the road to make way for a mum racing her kids to school the cactus broke above my hand. Of course it wasn't a clean break, it left a flap at the back of the break which acted like a hinge and a section of cactus about 1/2 a metre long, 70mm in diameter, weighing several kilos and studded with heavy 50mm spikes and covered with a dense fur of translucent fine spines came crashing down on my right shoulder blade. :eek: F#*k that hurt! Luckily at least I was wearing my safety Akubra (it's got a 50mm gash in the back of it where it saved me from a chisel a d@*#head dropped from one storey up) so it glanced off the brim rather than tearing at my ear. :rolleyes:
I refrained from my initial impulse to inflict violence on the cactus, which was probably wise as I would've come off second best anyway. I still had to walk another 50 M or so with the spines in my shirt working their way in. Got home and binned the shirt then rang the local surgery. My wife had an appointment anyway so while she was being seen the nurse picked the spines out and dressed the (painful) wound site. :( Of course every one at the surgery, patients and staff had a good laugh at my expense. :o So I thought I'd post my experience here so that you could all have a laugh at my expense as well!
Mick the cacti wrangler :p
