Jim Radloff thought he had turned the snowblower off when he reached in to remove a log of slush. But he forgot that it takes a while for the blades to shut down, and that mistake cost him three fingers on Feb. 29 in what the Eau Claire, Wis., pianist calls his “Leap Day Lament.”
“I reached in, forgetting that when you turn the machine off it doesn’t stop on a dime, it takes five seconds for the second stage to shut off,” Radloff said. “I had a new pair of gloves on, it got in where it shouldn’t have been, I heard a ‘crrrkkk’ sound, I pulled my hand up and all I could see was no glove and a hand gushing blood. The saddest part about it is it was my blood.”
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