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Now I know some of you hunter types out there would just say "shoot 'em Lizbeth!" but it's only a pup. I for one am glad they did the right thing and helped the poor guy out of a sticky situation.
click the pic to see the article
[url "http://www.ksl.com/?sid=25221761&nid=711&title=coyote-pup-saved-after-running-into-cactus&fm=home_page&s_cid=queue-16"][inline "cholla coyote.jpg"]
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[#0000FF]While I lived in Arizona I saw lots of critters suffering from "close encounters" with cholla cactus. Because they grab onto you so easily and pull loose from the parent plant, they are mistakenly called "jumping cactus". It seems as if they jump on to you.
The spines have little barbs that make them hold on firmly...and efforts to rub them off only get you stuck with more spines. I always carried long nose pliers and/or hemostats when out and about in Arizona.
One of my buddies down there found a young black lab lying beside the road, similarly covered with cholla branches. It was virtually paralyzed with pain and exhaustion. He was able to get it into a vet and get the spines removed and the wounds disinfected. Fortunately it had a collar with ID. Turns out it belonged to a young couple from Washington who had reported the dog missing after a hike in the desert while on vacation. They were happy to fly back and pick up their newly educated dog...and the dog was happy too.
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We have quite a bit of cholla in the SW Utah. My dogs quickly have learned to avoid all cactus. When I was hiking down there and my younger dog was just about 8 month old my older dog spotted prickly pear catcus growing on all sides of the trail down in the next valley. She sprinted down through it with the pup in tow. Of course the older dog avoided the cactus but the younger one came out with quite a bit attached. Lesson not forgotten by the pup. The thing that's hard about cholla is it dries up and turns brown laying on the ground. Harder for me or the dogs to spot then. Sticks into their feet and will go right through the typical shoes if not extra careful in areas with it.
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[#0000FF]There were actually several different varieties of cholla in Arizona. They all had nasty spines and were all a potential hazard to float tubes. If they didn't reach out and puncture your tube on the way to the water they could get you in stealth mode...lying unseen at the water's edge...where they poked into the bottom of your craft when you were launching or beaching. Had many a tubing trip ended early by streams of bubbles coming up out from under the tube.
As you mention, they can be surprisingly strong too. I have actually had flat tires on my offroad vehicles when driving in cholla country...either from sidewall punctures or even up through the tread.
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I've had occasions that led to close encounters of the cactus kind. Visiting the deserts west of San Diego - we used to have quite a time tripping around "the middle of nowhere". I recall one frisbee game that lead to my thigh firmly engaging a barrell cactus. I did manage to disconnect, and yank the spines out, but the pain and subsequent infection lingered on for quite some time.
Thanks for sharing your stories. Have a neighbor who sprays and kills grasses in the orchard behind, but there is one small weed that seems immune. So it's been selected to be the only thing left. Small soft green but then dries into a spiky hard pokey little "club". Much too tuff for tender pups feet. They won't walk through it. Shame, with the weed killer killed ALL the weeds. I'd take soft wildgrasses over those things.
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[#0000FF]Sounds like you have a case of "puncture vine"...grows along the ground and leaves the multi pointed seed husks when dead and dried. Nasty. Not good for puppy feets or bike tires neither.
Got lots of cactus "tails". Best one is when TubeBabe and I were working up the side of a hill near a busy road...to get some pics of an unusually shaped saguaro. (I used to put on slide shows for winter visitors of the desert flora and fauna.) My wife suddenly hit high C and my first thought was "SNAKE". She hates 'em. But when I spun around to see the cause of the shriek I saw her sporting a big chunk of cholla spines...firmly embedded in her behind. Too much swing and sway on the trail I guess.
Anyhooters, I used my always present tongs and hemostats to carefully pull away the cactus lobe. But it left behind a few remnant spines. So right up there on the hill...in view of passing vehicles...she had to drop trou so that I could pluck them one by one from her tender tush. Pardon the pun but she was really em-bare-assed. And she didn't do a lot of sitting for a couple of days.
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