Skip to main content

TIFU by spraying myself with Bear spray, not once, but twice.

We live in Southern BC, black bears are around town fattening themselves up. We have a small number of Apple trees in our yard.

We got a new dog this week, he is a 9 month old German Shephard rescue. He is wonderful, still working on name recall etc.

Last night I let the dog out into our fenced yard for a toilet break before bed. I saw them too late, a decent sized Mumma black bear and a smaller cub in the back corner. He was off after them before I could react. Due to the size/shape of the Yard the Mumma bear hurried her cub up the closest tree and followed it after. I ran inside to grab the dogs lead and a can of bear spray we keep around (we get bears a lot).

A good 20 mins of him barking/lunging at them and the bears hissing/fake charging back.

I decided it was not going to resolve itself, the bears were not going anywhere (fenced in yard, unsure how they got in - perhaps over the back smaller fence) and I was not able to call the Dog to heel or get his lead onto him.

I decided to open the side gates around our house to give the bears 2 ways out, as I was securing the gate through our carport to the front (and hopefully a way out for the bears), I had the bear spray in my hand and accidentally leaned against the trigger (it's a top press, and I had the safety off when the bear started charging and I thought he might try and run up onto our back porch).

It was only a quick spray, but it was in an enclosed space (car port) and I was done. Blind and burning I stumbled out into the front and lay on the lawn. The dog noticed I was gone and to his credit came to check on me, fortunately I heard him and still had his lead in my hand, so was able to connect it to his collar and I fumbled us in the side door (from carport) and locked it behind us. Bear problem solved, I had bigger issues though.

Ended up filling sink with water and dunking my head in there for a few minutes, which helped a little, then I was in the shower for a good 20mins flushing my face under the water. Came good about 35mins post spray, no ongoing effects.

This morning, I go out to clean up the mess, I close the gates, check on the trees, the dog runs around sniffing everything and I go back inside. There is the real TIFU I guess, I had not considered residual bear spray on the door handle and frame for the gate, when I came back inside I wiped the inside of my eye and it hit me again. F, back in the shower for another 15 minutes, luckily just the one eye. Several hours later I feel like I have a mild sunburn.

I need to go back to the carport and hose everything down, ill wear gloves and PPE this time.

TLDR: I was clumsy and bear sprayed myself in the face, forgot about residual spray and post cleanup today got it back in my eyes again.

Edit: *spelling

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

TIFU - Don’t do what I did

On Sunday morning Aug. 24th, I awoke to discover a large blind spot in my right eye, which turned out to be what is called wet age-related macular degeneration (AMD). It has resulted in a very significant, permanent loss of vision in that eye. Although I maintain good peripheral vision, whatever I focus on at best is very blurry, and mostly disappears. I can barely make out the large E at the top of the eye chart. If this happens to my left eye I’ll be unable to read or drive. It turns out that I missed the opportunity that I had to prevent this from becoming a serious problem because I failed to report what appeared to be minor changes in my vision. In the weeks prior to August I had noticed that what I knew to be straight lines appeared to my right eye to have a little waviness. I also noticed that the color of my front lawn, which I could see through the window from my recliner,  was subdued, looked almost gray, in my right eye. So I scheduled an eye exam, which revealed the p...
Post a Comment
Read more

TIFU by getting suspended for 2 days by my front office in school.

I (13M) am an African American student at Jeannette junior high who had got suspended for 2 days here. I was in math class minding my business until my teacher had told me to go to the main office, which posed no problem to me. As i went down there, the people of the front office had stopped me and made me get a new ID (yes, we have id's.) so i had asked them if i could maybe do a different alternative and call my mother to let her bring the Id here, even then, the Id isn't that important. So, although i was talking to them in a calm manner and not showing any signs of rebellion, they had threatened to call the police on me without thinking twice before calling my parents. This is where i started getting angry, and even then now the black peers agree that could have been a racially motivated action. They then told me to sit in the office conference room because of that, leading into more anger. They had then called my mother who had came over to the school didn't even let ...
Post a Comment
Read more

TIFU by putting my already skinny jeans in the dryer on high heat.

TL;DR: Was stupid and didn't realize I put my clothes on extra high heat in the dryer. Had to rock skintight skinny jeans all day with tighty whities (only clean pair I had since I procrastinate doing laundry like crazy). I guess the constant wedgies and squishing are punishment for my stupidity. Honestly don’t know who else to blame but myself for this. I’m a scatterbrained guy so I literally put the highest setting on a load with most of my clothes, and my skinny jeans that I was planning to wear today. You can probably already see where this is going, but somehow I didn’t. For context, these jeans were already pushing the limits of what could reasonably be called wearable. They fit, technically, but only in the sense that I could get them on with enough determination and a bit of strategic breathing. Sitting down in them was more of a commitment than a casual action. Still, they looked good, and I had convinced myself that discomfort was just part of the aesthetic. So this m...
Post a Comment
Read more