Four Fingers Severed in Wakeboard Accident. One Returned 7 Weeks Later by a Lake Trout

Look. There’s not much I can really add to this story. I’m just going to let you read, but know that it is a rollercoaster ride of emotions. At first I laughed. Then I dry heaved. Then I nearly wet heaved. Then I laughed again.

From the story in the Spokesman-Review:
When Haans Galassi of Colbert got a call from the Bonner County sheriff this morning, he had a feeling he knew what it was about.

“The sheriff called me and told me he had a strange story to tell me,” said the 31-year-old project manager for a Sandpoint-based software developer.

“He said that a fisherman was out on Priest Lake, and I pretty much knew exactly what he was going to say at that point,” Galassi said.

“I was like: Let me guess, they found my fingers in a fish.”

The lake trout caught Sept. 11 yielded just one of the four fingers he lost seven weeks earlier in a wakeboarding accident on the North Idaho lake.

Galassi actually had joked – prophetically, it turns out – about such an outcome when people asked if the severed fingers could have been reattached to his left hand.

“I’m like, no, I couldn’t find them. They’re gone, you know; they’re fish food at the bottom of the lake,” he said…

…The sheriff’s office offered to return the finger to Galassi, but he declined.

“I’m like, uhhh, I’m good,” he said.

[Sheriff Gary] Johnston said the agency will keep the digit for a few weeks just in case Galassi changes his mind.

“There’s still three more, too,” he noted. “It’s hard to say where those are going to end up.”

I’ve left out a lot of the middle of the story, which goes into far more detail about Galassi’s accident, and also more detail about the finger, in particular, how the sheriff was amazed by its condition. He notes is was not all bloated like your fingers get when you fall asleep in a hot tub. I highly recommend clicking here and reading the full story.