Hazards

There were many dangers working out on the marsh. When you work outside, things can happen fast.

We had a guy that was allergic to bees. We got stung when we'd we would accidently pull hives up from under the moss. Ground bees apparantly love building nests in the drier marshes. He had to be rushed to the hospital twice. After that, he moved on to another job. We had another guy who got swarmed by ants when the mossing machine pulled up a colony and dropped in right into his arms. He also had to be rushed to the hospital.

A big solid tree tipped over once and smashed onto a truck where three men had just been loading the moss. One was still up there and heard the crack. He'd cut trees all his life and knew what was coming and jumped clear. That big solid tree was hollow on the inside almost a third of the way up. Crazy. We'd used its shade many times during our lunch breaks, never suspecting the danger.

We were always aware that we were standing on a mass of decomposing plants, suspended over an unknown amount of water. In some areas, the water was only a few inches deep. In others, it was many feet deep.
One time I was standing out there, handpulling with my trusty mossing hook, when my left leg dropped through to just below the thigh. It happened extremely fast. My co-worker gave me support while I wiggled out. My other footing was still solid, but it was a trick getting out. I couldn't touch bottom with the one that fell through. We stopped pulling in that spot and moved over aways.
On that same marsh, several days and at least a half-mile away, a 17-year-old co-worker stepped off the boat and dissappeared up to his neck. By the time I thought, "What the.." he had grabbed the edge of the boat and sprung up out of the water, back onto the boat, saying, he couldn't touch bottom. I was so very glad that it had been him. He was fast, with awesome reflexes. I had just been on the boat not long before that. I expect I would have dropped like a rock. There would have been none of that leaping outta the water like Flipper.
We immediately stopped mossing there. We couldn't see the hole he'd stepped into because the top of the marsh was covered in about 6 inches of water. We also marked the spot with a big stake and a red warning bandana. I pointed it out to the county forester when he came, so he could make note of the location.

Working ontop of water like that, we watched for lightning like mice watch for hawks. As soon as we saw lightning, we'd head for shore. One of our guys had been struck before, twice, though not at that job. He could tell a storm was coming before the clouds even told so.
I and another guy were standing in the small trees next to shore during a thunderstorm. usually, there would be vehicles to sit in. But this day, everyone was gone with the trucks trying to get a big truck unstuck from the forest road (that happened a lot too). We were standing there, wearing rain coats, getting soaked anyway, when lightning struck a small tree right next to us. We both went running up the hill and just then one of the guys with a truck and topper came rolling in. We hopped right into the back of his truck without a hello, how are you? at all.

I was cruising along once thinking what a cool job it was when, over the sound of the cat, I heard a big SLURP, WHOOSH sound. Having already been smacked in the head by something coming up off my track, more than once, I threw my clutch in, while I leaned just a little to the right. A tree trunk, about two and a half inches in diameter, about four feet long attached to a huge root system and hundreds of pounds of mud, moss and debris plopped onto my left track. If I had not thrown that clutch it at precisely that moment, the clump would have swatted me right off that cat and down into my track on the opposite side.
I shut my cat off and thanked the Powers That Are. I spent the next 20 minutes trying to get the trunk pried out from between the cleats on my track. I tried to push the mound off. It was so heavy I couldn't lift it. I kicked and kicked at the trunk and it wouldn't budge.
I had a radio most of the time I worked out there. But this was in the early days before I had the radio. I was right next to shore, but it would have been a very long walk back to the landing we were working out of. I knew they would be looking for me before I could walk back. I had already tried driving a little forward and a little back, then trying to push it off, to no avail.
I finally figured out to take the chain I used for pulling stuck cats out, and wrapped it to the trunk, walked over to a sturdy tree and chained it tight. Then I started my cat and backed up about two inches, ever so slowly. It pulled it right off! I was really happy. But I never forgot my near miss.

My buddy G was standing beside me on the ground once, when I was loading a cat onto a trailer. I had done this many times before. It was November and we were packing it up for the year. The trailer was wet from the cat I had just loaded before. I didn't notice, but a thin sheet of ice had formed. About half-way up the ramp, the cat slid sideways. It stopped, but was cocked at a funny angle. I had to go back down and start over. Pretty heart-thumping while I got my composure. One of the guys said he would load it for me. (My leg was jumping like a rabbit. Shaking uncontrollably. I could not make it stop. It was pretty emabarrassing.) I said no, I could handle it. I was afraid that if I didn't load it myself that I would be afraid to load. I was so proud that I had learned to do it, I didn't want to give it up. So I waited a few minutes and then just as nice as pie, rolled it down and went right back up, no problem.

G got bucked right out of his seat on a cat once. He was hauling boats in and decided to cut through some brush, hit a stump and was thrown forward onto his gas tank. He just missed going down into his track. His arm had caught on the brake and that flopped him onto the gas tank.
That was as bad as the time his cat went sideways on a trailer. It was before my time. He had been driving up the trailer forwards when it went sideways.He was already up on the bed of the trailer. It slid off the edge and one of his coworkers, thinking and acting fast, got onto his track, balancing the pivot point and prevented it from going over the edge and potentially crushing him. G later taught me to load by backing up the ramp, the cats are more stable that way, he said.

I got hurt once. I was standing on my cat track up on the landing. I had just put gas in and I was handing the empty can to somebody on the ground, when a wooden cleat broke out from under me. One leg went through the track, which scraped a little, but the one I injured was straight out when I went down landing across the track and making a terrible crack. I had bent my knee two far the wrong way. It really hurt bad. I immediately cried, which I hated to do in front of the crew. I could barely walk. I had the weekend to heal up. For three weeks I limped around on that leg. I'd been to the doctor twice. Using a cat analogy, it felt like my knee was slightly off the track.
The third week into the pain and suffering, working the whole time, I was walking down a trail when Mother Nature fixed my leg.
When you drive the cats through the woods, brush gets run over. Many times the brush is laying down but still attached by the roots. I was walking along alone on my way up to the vehicles when I tripped over one of those laid down bushes. I flew through the air towards the ground. When I got to the full extent of my trajectory, all that connected me to the ground was the toe of my mossing boot. My leg snapped again. I came down hard on my shoulder. Even as I hit the ground with a big thud, I knew my knee was fixed! I was battered and bruised but very, very grateful. It didn't even hurt after that.