Full Moons and First Responders

Halloween is coming, which for most of us is cause for celebration. The part of our brains that remembers being a kid dressed in a costume, getting to binge our way to diabetes on candy the neighbors gave away for free gets an immediate boost of the feel-good chemicals. The weather in some parts of the country is cooling, the leaves are changing, the smell of burning leaf piles gets you at random, it's fantastic. 

Unless, of course, you work in emergency services. Police, fire, emergency medical, it doesn’t matter; a full moon comes out, and the world you live in fills with absolute absurdity. Patients code for no reason, fires won’t go out, suspects seem to have saved up for the special extra strength methamphetamine for the occasion. In honor of the best of times and the worst of times, here are a few examples of full moon lunacy.

Police Response – An American Werewolf in America

While police officers do tend to be a superstitious bunch, not everyone believes in the full moon effect. Patrol Officer Brad Keppler was one such skeptic, and for the first few months at his new precinct he had no reason to question himself. One night, a friend asked to swap shifts in order to attend his daughter’s soccer match, but made sure to tell him that if he wanted to say no, he’d understand because the full moon was on its way. Officer Keppler called the idea ridiculous and made the switch.

Then began the night from hell. Drunks, domestic disturbance, emotionally disturbed persons, just an absolute nightmare. Just as it was about to be over, the sun was soon to rise, the last call came in. There was a werewolf on the local college campus. To make matters worse, there were multiple reports, so it wasn’t a drug induced hallucination. Campus security refused to go near the creature. On the other hand, it hadn’t hurt anyone either, so that was something.

Stepping out of his patrol car, Officer Keppler also took out his less than lethal shotgun. As a precaution only, even humans can be dangerous. Keppler walked across the south lawn, towards the last reported location. He froze in his tracks when he saw a naked, fur covered humanoid shape with distinctly wolf-like features sitting in a tree with something reddish in its hands. The shotgun came up about halfway, and Keppler shouted “show me your hands, please!” His mouth gaped as the creature looked up at him, hopped down carefully, then complied with the instructions. A few more commands later, the shotgun had been slung and the creature was on the ground face down waiting to be cuffed. Just as Keppler turned his head to report in and request a second officer, the “werewolf” leaped up, barked in surprise, and took off running in the opposite direction.

The creature got away and Keppler SPOOKED. To be fair, they did find a very high-end werewolf costume during a drug bust at an abandoned house up the street a few weeks later, but who really knows for sure…

Firefighters On Call – Smut in all the Strangest Places

A firefighter who shall remain nameless was called out to a vehicle accident at 0500 in the morning. On arrival, it seems a driver had struck a tree, head on, at between 120 and 140 miles per hour. On impact, the vehicle and most of its contents disintegrated. That’s the word the firefighter chose, and that’s the word that best describes what happened. Car parts and human remains were scattered all over the hay field just past the tree, a complete horror show. The crew followed standard procedure.

“I'll set the scene for you: It's early morning, the sun is just coming up. We're shoulder to shoulder in a hay field, hay up to our knees. Walking a grid pattern and stopping when we encounter car parts, or human remains. The latter of which we marked for disposal in hazmat bags. And then we found the first DVD. Then the second. Then the third. The man who had wrecked, was a porn re-seller. Who had a trunk absolutely positively full of bootleg porn DVD's. There were thousands scattered in the field. So, as we walked this field at 6am, marking human remains and avoiding car parts, searching in vain for any survivors, we were walking through piles of porn DVDs. Thousands of porn DVDs. Of all titles/varieties. We eventually determined only our ill-fated driver was in the vehicle. All the remains we had marked were brought back and placed in hazmat bags. A few of the largest pieces of car remaining were put onto a trailer, and we left. Nobody touched the porn. To my knowledge there is still a hay field in southern Mississippi that is absolutely full of old bootleg porn DVD's. I occasionally think about this man as I get older. Why did he have so much porn. And where was he going with it in such a hurry?”

Medical on Station – Slasher Flick or DIY Gone Awry

A country fella comes into the ER one night, full moon at full blast, with his hands buried under a ZZ Top beard. He walks up to the desk, fully ambulatory, and whispers "Help, I cut myself.”

The nurse at the desk notices he has quite a bit of blood on him, so she perks up and asks the location of the injury. He takes his hands away to lift his beard and shows her a huge gash along his throat, which starts squirting blood. He quickly claps his hands back over the gash and squeezes it closed. She begins to rally the troops, trying to get him to sit down, and apparently, he's the type that can't talk without using his hands. He keeps trying to explain, telling her a long story, and blood gets on the desk, on the floor and everywhere else it can go. She said he looked like a slasher movie come to life, with added comic effect. The doctors in the ED told her later he was rushed to surgery, and he was trying to talk the whole time, drunk as a skunk.

They weren't sure how he even managed to get to the hospital as he came in by himself...but he ended up being just fine.