Fr. Joe has a friend, Susan, who is a Druid. He asked her to be caretaker of the building and its four acres of land. Susan has moved into the ex-church and is offering the property's use to different pagan communities for their rituals. Birgit and Liz, the older ladies (they are a couple) who run our kindred and John the Archdruid immediately accepted the offer.
On Saturday, we went to go do some cleanup, remove the cross from the front of the building, paint over "Centro Guadalupano" on the facade and have a first ritual. Not long after we arrived, Susan came out with her two doggies, one of whom is a pit bull. I stood still so the dogs could get a good sniff, but neither of them seemed interested, so I turned around to walk to the table where we were about to plan out our tasks.
I heard a growl behind me and the pitbull snapped at my left hand. He punctured the skin of my inner left wrist as if it were rice paper. I yowled and Susan hastened to tie the dog up. The wound was deep, and took a couple of seconds to fill with blood. As I watched, I noticed the white gleam of tendon underneath. My friends were alarmed and bandaged the injury. Liz brought me coffee. I did manage to help do some cleaning, but not a lot. The bandages soaked through in an hour, so I took them off, replaced them with a gauze pad and tape, and buried the bloody bandages at the food of Odin's tree.
Ultimately I cut our stay short (I'd driven a couple of people) and after dropping off my passengers I hastened to the ER at our hospital of record, the UCSD in Hillcrest. I received good care as always, although it was a little surrealistic being checked in by a transwoman. She wasn't being a very successful one; she looked and sounded like a man in womens' clothing, despite the curly blond hair pulled back in a ponytail.
My wound was examined, irrigated, bandaged, and I was given Keflex and a tetanus shot since the last one I'd had was in June of 2005 in Basic Training.
No idea why doggie attacked me. Susan says he's going to be tied up whenever people are on the property now; this can't be allowed to happen again. A while after I was bit, Susan gave me some turkey and we went to go visit the dog. He took the turkey very nicely and let me pet him. I told him he was not allowed to bite me ever again. It was just weird; animals usually adore me and the only time I've been bitten before was not that bad and because I was a child teasing the dog.
Comments
Colourful story about the property.
I hope you'll see this as constructive criticism, because I'm sure you didn't mean it in any way other than as a matter of fact observation, but I'm troubled by your remark about the transwoman. There could be any number of reasons why she doesn't "pass." She may or may not see passing undetected as a goal for herself, and to say she is "unsuccessful" in her gender presentation because you could tell she was a transwoman is cisgender-normative.
The wrist hurts like a big dog depending on how I bend it. Putting pressure on it is a no-no.