Tree Hugging

When pushing a pile of trees with your Bobcat, watch out one don't push back:

Fairview Heights [Missouri] Fire Chief Bryan Doyle said Jack Weir was trying to clear a spot for a new pond when he was hurt. While Weir was pushing a pile of trees, one spun up and hit the bucket of the Bobcat, then went through his lower abdomen, Doyle said. The tree was about 4 to 5 inches around.

"We cut the tree — it was still 25 feet long — to get him out of the Bobcat," Doyle said. "He was sitting up in the Bobcat."

The rescuers sawed off the tree until only a 3-foot section remained. Jack Weir was transported to the hospital by helicopter with that section of tree still in him.

"One of the EMTs (emergency medical technicians) — her only job was to hold that log in Jack," Julie Weir said. "All the way up to the waiting helicopter and all the way to the hospital, she held that log in him, which was remarkable."

Julie Weir said her husband was conscious throughout the rescue. "He was very calm, but he did say a bunch of times to get it off me, just cut it off of me," she said. "But of course they couldn't do that because the pressure was what was allowing him to continue to be alive."

The Weirs didn't know until later how much worse things could have been. None of Jack Weir's major organs was hit.

The tree "entered above his left knee and scraped all the way to the inside of his left thigh and then impaled into his lower abdomen and tore all of the oblique muscles — ripped them to shreds — but didn't hit kidneys, intestines, liver, spleen, nothing — which is totally remarkable," Julie Weir said.

Another miracle is that the Bobcat stayed put after the tree went through Weir.

"He said he tried to back up the Bobcat," Julie Weir said. "My standing joke is God leaned on the back of the Bobcat and said there's only so much we can do here. Because if he had backed up that Bobcat he would have pulled that tree out of him, and he surely would have bled to death."

He's all kinds of lucky to be alive, and if they're not keeping him under sedation for the time-being, he'd have to be in all kinds of pain. His wife says he's not "with it" yet, so with those injuries and three surgeries in a week, I'm figuring that's what they're doing.
Now retired from the Army Reserve, he'd just come back last year from a tour in Iraq. Watch out if those insurgents ever leave farm machinery outside the gates.