An amputated foot in a bucket on the porch

July 27, 2005 10:44 PM

This guy kept his amputate foot in a bucket of formaldehyde on his porch. Occasionally he would cut off toes to give to friends as gifts. Uhhh, thanks. I guess. via SLC's own hektik.
posted by trbrts (23 comments total)

I hope he kicks his own ass with that chopped off foot. And puts the pictures on the intarnets. But I do not want a toe (which I'm guessing isn't especially sanitary once its not in the formaldehyde).
posted by fenriq at 10:58 PM on July 27, 2005

Yee-haw! This happened here!
posted by interrobang at 11:02 PM on July 27, 2005

Fuck lids, man! Hot damn!
(I love my city)
posted by hototogisu at 11:09 PM on July 27, 2005

Hehe, its sort of amusing to see a news story from the local newspaper posted to metafilter. The Lawrence Journal World article from earlier this week has pictures of the man and his foot bucket. Sadly, they did not publish a picture of the severed foot itself.
posted by Derive the Hamiltonian of... at 11:12 PM on July 27, 2005

Good for him.
posted by kenko at 11:16 PM on July 27, 2005

Amputated after a series of medical problems...
thanks for the information.

glad he got it back, wonder if he's aware of the hazards of keeping that stuff around.
posted by Busithoth at 11:47 PM on July 27, 2005

This reminds me very little of the time when, at 14, I got my foot stuck in a lawn mower. Somehow I managed to barely slice the inside of the big toe, fully remove the second and fourth, with the third bravely hanging on but later removed in surgery. Net: This little piggy went to market (long pause) and this little piggy went wee wee wee all the way home.

The only one home at the time was mom who was vacuuming upstairs. I hopped to the foyer and threw my good tennis shoe up the circular stairwell to get her attention. Didn't work. The other shoe, a bit worse for wear at this point, did. It rebounded off the wall with a thud, leaving an interesting spray on the wallpaper, and rested behind a planter on a landing high above. Discovered some time later but left alone for years.

At the hospital, when the surgeon checked in on his handy work I had a few questions: Will I walk again? "Certainly." Will I have a limp? (pause) "Noooo... but when you swim, you'll just go around in circles."
posted by hal9k at 2:08 AM on July 28, 2005 [2 favorites]

Not to make any generalizations about folks in that area, but how many times did he "Occasionally ... cut off toes to give to friends as gifts"? More than five?
posted by Joeforking at 2:49 AM on July 28, 2005 [1 favorite]

Residents of Lawrence are given a strict friends-quota. It's not a problem. Really.
posted by hototogisu at 2:50 AM on July 28, 2005

"Rubottom, an artist, recovering methamphetamine addict and occasional hip-hop master of ceremonies..."

That's the best part.
posted by neckro23 at 4:19 AM on July 28, 2005 [1 favorite]

meh.
posted by moonbird at 4:44 AM on July 28, 2005

If I had to lose a foot, I'd probably get it taxidermied and make a planter out of it.
posted by Faint of Butt at 4:52 AM on July 28, 2005 [1 favorite]

My high school english teacher had some sort of surgery on his digestive tract and got part of his colon removed. He wanted to keep it in a jar in his classroom and bring it out when he did lessons on the semi-colon. He also didn't want the doctors to give him back his belly button after the surgery, so when he went to the beach he'd be the one person there with no belly button.
posted by sciurus at 4:54 AM on July 28, 2005

He wanted to keep it in a jar in his classroom and bring it out when he did lessons on the semi-colon.

He could loan it to the English teachers whenever they did a unit on punctuation, too...
posted by alumshubby at 5:14 AM on July 28, 2005

Dang...should've read more closely...
posted by alumshubby at 5:14 AM on July 28, 2005

It just goes to show... you give them an inch, and they'll take your foot.
posted by phirleh at 5:24 AM on July 28, 2005

What th' farkin' fark?
posted by ZenMasterThis at 6:00 AM on July 28, 2005

"Ezekiel Rubottom"!!
posted by scratch at 7:11 AM on July 28, 2005

This reminds me a little of the Frank Zappa song, "Idiot Bastard Son"
posted by troutfishing at 7:17 AM on July 28, 2005

This man is kind of my new hero.
posted by kalimac at 7:17 AM on July 28, 2005

Another severed digit in the news.
posted by scratch at 7:48 AM on July 28, 2005

I have an aquaintance who runs a vintage clothing and gift store. On one wall she has floor-to-ceiling shelving, displaying many various types of preserved-in-a-jar animals.
Meanwhile, in the middle row, second-from-left is her uterus.
I think I'd probably want to keep removed body parts...I dunno...*shivers*
posted by Radio7 at 7:54 AM on July 28, 2005

Doctors said they were confident they could reattach the finger to its 34-year-old owner after it was rushed back to Freiburg in an ambulance.

Haha, I just loved imaging a severed finger on a tiny stretcher in the middle of an ambulance.
posted by Citizen Premier at 8:25 AM on July 28, 2005