They Weren't His Favorite Toes Anyway

Thanks, TMI, for alerting me to this story:

A Colorado lumberjack who cut off all of the toes on his right foot after he was pinned by a logging trailer said he had been afraid it would take hours to find him and he might die.

Jon Hutt, 61, used a 3-inch pocket knife to sever his toes from the machinery about half an hour after realising no one heard his cries. He was deep in a forest trying to retrieve a pile of fallen trees to cut up for firewood when the trailer slipped.

This isn't that uncommon, actually. I've cut off toes and whittled on my foot because of intractably knotted bootlaces before. It's just a matter of who's going to be the boss, you or the laces/trailer.

OK not really. In fact, even among pretend lumberjacks like me, nobody goes out in the forest anymore. You can make more money by filling out paperwork certifying that you would be a lumberjack if it weren't for some physical handicap of childhood trauma, and then get the government to pay you for not chopping down trees.

In fact, until they closed the loophole, you could get the government to hire people to chop down the trees for you. You would then tell the hired "timber assistants" to cancel the job. Then you'd get paid for saving the forest; and get paid again for hiring workers from an economically depressed region; and get paid again when you sold the wood that didn't get cut to the government.

I made (or pretended to make) a good living doing this. Finally though, all that imaginary timber took a toll on my back and I couldn't pretend to do it any longer.