Gored by a BUFFALO???

I know.... that's written correctly though! Are you ready for this story???

This is my aunt who was taken on her first plane trip ANYWHERE by her son (Xmas present- going First Class!) to visit friends in FL and do 'all the things she's wanted to do and may never get another chance to do them' (is what she told me). I think the list was... hold an alligator, have a snake wrapped around her neck and swim with the manatees.... Well, you can see by the photo she got some of her dream fulfilled.

I'll back up slightly. She was to make the trip on a Sat, come home on a Wed. I started calling her on Thurs and then every couple of days, since she didn't answer my message on her machine. Finally, I left her a 'crazy' message... something like, "Alright, I'm assuming the ONLY reason you aren't responding to my messages is that you have disowned me, you found a man to run off with, you have a strange illness and have been hospitalized but don't want to tell anyone about it, or you took a small private plane ride- didn't file a flight plan and it crashed and you're dead! If it's NOT any of those choices, call me." This was left on Wed, 2 weeks after she should have come home ....

Well, she called on Thurs and told me she just got home and 'it was almost one of your choices....'

"WHAT??" I said.

"Well, I got gored by a buffalo." my response, was , "Yah, ok... what really happened?"...

"I GOT GORED BY A BUFFALO and spent seven days in the hospital!"

To make a long story short, (although the long story is soooo entertaining), after the photo got taken, they were headed over to friends for dinner and went by The Villages and saw two buffalo in a 'pen' (if you could call three rows of barbed wire a pen)on a lot near the entrance to Buffalo Trail -- Families with children were there feeding the buffalo carrots so they stopped to take a picture of my aunt with the buffalos. She stood by the fence and just before my cousin took her picture he turned his head for a second and heard SCREAMING, turned and saw his mom tangled in the barbed wire!! As they were checking her over for cuts, someone realized she had a gouge in her leg just above the knee and it was spirting blood. After a trip to the firestation down the road (remember, they were 'tourists'), they were taken to the hosp (in the Villages) by ambulance, treated and sent back to the hotel.

That night she came down with a case of the chills, and although the room was 78 degrees, she went back to bed wrapped in quilts. The next day she couldn't use her legs at all and they rushed her to the 'real' hospital. She was on multiple IVs, was given medicine they use on Anthrax patients, her liver wasn't operating at full copacity, her blood count was off and she had a 'raging infection' going on....!!

She made the paper although they said she was an 'unidentified woman' and she 'refused treatment'. I DON'T THINK SO>>>>!

I guess the horn of a buffalo isn't bone, it's made of hair and is the most bacteria-infested thing and the most dangerous thing on any animal you can get infected from. She had to stay extra time to be checked after being released from the hospital, so that's why she was gone so long. She said she got to ride through the waves before she left (What,,, on a horse??, in a car?? What?), and it was a good trip all in all..(gee, didn't I read into it that she almost died!!??), but her only bad thing is she didn't get to 'swim with the manatees'...

Don't that beat all......