TORONTO – In a harrowing tale of survival, local hiker Todd Barnett has managed to escape a street canvasser by removing his left arm with nothing but his own front teeth.
“I’m an experienced outdoorsman, so I never expected that I’d be facing disaster on an ordinary jaunt through my own neighbourhood,” Barnett said. “But when I made eye contact, there wasn’t any way for me to avoid talking to them without looking rude, so I started using my belt to cut off circulation to the lower part of my arm.”
Barnett was then trapped in a conversation that seemed to last about one hundred and twenty seven hours, and was forced to drink his own urine to avoid dehydration.
“I realized early on that I was going to have to gnaw my arm off to get free,” Barnett said. “But it wasn’t until the second canvasser came over and also started talking to me that I got over the fear and started to chew.”
Barnett had managed to get most of the meat of his forearm past the gums quickly, but reached a crisis when he realized that he was too weak from boredom to bite through his own bones.
“There was a certain peace that came from knowing I was going to die,” Barnett said. “But just when I’d reached that point, I spotted the rock.”
Barnett then excused himself from the conversation for a few seconds, crossed the street to pick up the rock, returned back across the street, asked the canvassers to please continue, and then used the rock to smash the chewed sections of his radius and ulna into damp, crimson powder.
“After that, I only had to use the donation pen to punch through the last bit of synovial membrane, and I was free,” Barnett said. “It was painful, but I can’t describe the elation that was knowing I’d see my family again.”
Since Barnett has been discharged from hospital, his story has become international news, and is already being adapted into a major motion picture.
This is the second time that Barnett has gnawed off an arm to get away from street canvassers.
