Firefighters
are by nature natural problem solvers. If you think about it we get called for
everything nobody else knows what to do with. A citizen calls 911 because
something in their life has exceeded their ability to handle it.
The call
takers and dispatchers are highly trained professionals that spend many hours
in educational classes and are constantly being given new techniques in how to
help the general public.
Emergencies
that are clearly of a police nature go to the cops, things that are medical go
to the FD and the ambulance service, fires duh. What about those gray areas? One
thing that seems for some unknown reason to always fall to the fire service is
water, water in all its manifestations.
We don’t
own the water it is a tool we use in our job, but we aren’t responsible for
water. When someone has a water leak in their house they call 911 and are
worried that the water is going to get into their electrical system and short
it out and then cause a fire. So we get the call.
What do we
do? We show up, turn off the water and disable the electrical breakers that are
affected. But we aren’t plumbers or electricians we can’t fix it. When there is
a big rain storm and the streets become flooded we get the calls for that too.
Okay saving
someone that has become stranded in flood waters, we do that, we love that it’s
cool. But water flooding through your window wells isn’t really an emergency to
us. Yet we go.
One last
time we don’t do cats in trees. We don’t do bears in trees, or mountain lions,
or any number of critters that climb. We have rescued baby ducks and baby foxes
from storm drains, but that is just because we got called and because we want
to solve problems.
One December
night as we had all settled in for some popcorn and TV the doorbell rang. At the
door was one very distraught mother and small child. She was on the verge of
hysterics. We wanted to help and got her and the child inside as quickly as we
could.
In her
hands she clutched a shoebox. We got her to calm down and just tell us what the
problem was. Between gasps and shudders she explained that Santa had given her
daughter a hamster for Christmas, he name was…
“Mr.
Cuddles.” The little girl chimed in.
“and I
squeezed him too hard and stuff came out his butt.”
The mother
pushed the shoebox toward me.
“He’s in
there and he’s alive. But he’s kind of dragging his… his I guess his intestines
around behind him.”
I took the
box. We all exchanged a WTF do we do glance.
“Okay, so
you want us to fix him?” I asked.
“I don’t
think he can be fixed I called an emergency veterinarian clinic and they said
he should just be put down.”
She began
to cry all over again and her daughter grabbed her leg and began to cry and apologize
for hurting Mr. Cuddles. We assured her we had experience in these matters and
would be able to help her.
An outright
lie, but she was killing us with the little girl and all the crying, we just
wanted to help her out and get them out of the station.
“We will
take care of Mr. Cuddles, and do our best. Okay?” I said.
“Will he be
okay?” asked the little girl.
“Honey we
will do our best for Mr. Cuddles but he may be hurt too bad to be fixed, if
that is true we will still take care of him.”
“Promise?”
she said.
“Yeah we
promise.”
“Thank you
guys so much, I didn’t know what to do my husband is deployed and he normally handles
this kind of thing.” Said Mom.
“Well thank
him for his service and we are glad to help.”
With that
she and her daughter left. As soon as the door closed it began.
“What the
hell do we do with a hamster with its guts squeezed out?” asked Blue.
“Let’s take
a look.” Said Davey our lieutenant.
He took the
box and opened it. Inside was a little fuzzy ball, and it met the description offered
by the mother. He slipped the lid back on. Now Davey was a country ass Kansas
boy and had grown up on a farm, but he had never been presented with quit a dilemma
like this one.
“Well I’m
open to suggestions boys.” He looked us over.
“What do
you think TimO, can you give it an overdose of some kind of drug that will do
the job?” he asked me.
“I don’t
know Lou, I can’t give him any of my narcotics I have to account for those.”
“Something
else then?” asked Blue.
“We could
just drown him, put some rocks in the box and put it in a bucket.” Offered Bobby
the driver.
“That’s
what we used to do on the farm with unwanted animals sometimes.” Said the Lou.
“Is that
humane?” I asked.
“I don’t
know, you’re the one that said we could take care of it TimO, not us.” Said Blue.
“We could
just leave it outside in the cold I’m sure that would do it.” said Bobby.
“What if
they come back to see how it went and see the box outside? That would be
awkward.” Said the Lou.
“Let me
call one of my Docs and see what they say, maybe they’ll have an idea.” I said.
I went to
the office and called one of the emergency rooms and got one of my favorite Docs
on the phone. I explained our situation and she offered to help. She gave me
permission to mix up a little cocktail of meds, our own version of lethal
injection and signed off on the treatment.
We buried
the little hamster out in the flower garden the next day.
