It’s for 911 or a mouse bite

Now that the scene has been set regarding my job you’ll know I’m exposed to a lot more behind the scenes of how emergency services function. I work with a lot of people who used to, or still are, emergency personnel. There’s many an ex-cop, retired firefighter, previous EMS, to name a few. The things you learn from these people. Up until recently most of my emergency knowledge was based on Chicago Fire or Greys Anatomy.

Turns out, and this is shocking, TV shows are not terribly accurate.

All that to say, I learned that calling 911 is not as simple as you’ve been taught in your youth. Did you know that your call can be transferred to another dispatch center if you happen to be near a boundary line and your cell is routed to the wrong 911? You’re in the middle of an emergency, someone answers the phone, “911 what’s your emergency and where are you calling from? Please hold, that’s outside our zone.” Troubling.

Cell phones have introduced another tricky aspect to emergency calls. I assumed with all the advances of modern technology that if you call from a cell phone, your exact location is pinpointed and sent to dispatch. FALSE. Originally, the name and location was linked to whoever the phone was registered. If you were in college in Arizona and mom was still paying for your phone from Minnesota, you’re in a pickle.

Nowadays, cell phones send the location to 911 based off the nearest cell tower. Better, but not perfect.

Because of this, I requested Hubs put together some sort of landline, if those exist anymore. Fortunately, he’s very good at making my ideas reality. Now we have a house phone and our home address will populate to 911. We told the kids it’s our emergency phone but not to panic because the most likely scenario is needing to call one of us.

Primarily, the phone has been used when it’s dinner and I ask a kid to call Dad in from the shop. I mean this in the traditional sense of, walk outside to the shop and call the name ‘Dad.’ They decided this meant get the emergency phone, call Dad.

Fine. It’s good practice.

Would you like to know the first true emergency that required use of the emergency phone? You will never in 100 years guess.

I enter the scene of Hubs and the kids crowded in a circle around Benji.

“Where have you been?!” was the shouted chorus.

Hubs had that look of I’m about to say something that is ridiculous, but you need to play it super cool. As most of the words emitted from my children’s mouths fall into this category I felt fairly prepared. I braced myself and he began, “I got a call from J on the emergency phone, she said Benji got bit by a mouse and she’s worried he has rabies. So she called me because you were nowhere to be found.”

*I was not “nowhere to be found.” If something critical is going to happen to a kid, guaranteed it will be when I’m feeding the chickens. This chore I do once per week, and takes less than 5 minutes. I could leave the kids in the house for hours and they wouldn’t even know I’m gone. But without fail, 5 minutes in the chicken coop – attached to the house – chaos.*

My mind went a lot of places. Apparently I paused too long while processing because Hubs continued, “I told her she did the right thing but that mice can’t get rabies.”

“I think that might be possums?” I contributed. “No, wait. That’s leprosy. Possums can get leprosy, or they have leprosy? But they can’t get rabies. I think mice can get weird diseases. This might be worth looking into.”

“No,” he was adamant, “they’re too small to get rabies. They’re born and then they die before they catch anything serious.”

“No,” I continued, “the Black Plague definitely began with rats. Rodents can get terrible diseases.”

“No,” he pushed back, “that was in a crowded city sewer, this is a clean countryside on top of a hill and the mouse was probably born 3 weeks ago.”

“I protest the use of ‘hill,’ we live on top of a mountain.”

“My finger hurts really bad and it’s bleeding.” Benji interrupted.

I poured some rubbing alcohol on it and a bunch of neosporin. I have failed to mention that all this happened in the few minutes before school. They were supposed to be putting on jackets and getting in the car, so I was unclear how the mouse became part of the story.

“Doesn’t anyone want to know how I got bit?”

“Honestly, I’m not sure I do, but go ahead, let’s hear it.”

“Well Bobby the cat caught a mouse and was playing with it. And it looked so much like a hamster, so I went to pick it up. Then it bit me. The mouse, not the cat.”

“Okay this is good, I used to get bit by hamsters all the time and I never got a weird disease, this is probably going to be okay.” This was my logic.

We decided to proceed with our morning; we got in the car and Lexi stepped on my sunglasses and really smashed them. To which J said, “wow, first the mouse and now the glasses, this is a really terrible day.”

I parked at the end of the driveway and waited for the bus. This was after the great thaw and our drive was mostly a sheet of ice. I helpfully announced, “careful when you get out kids, there’s a bunch of ice out there.”

The bus arrived, the kids dismounted, J wiped out. She shot me a look from the ground and said, “really, all the things that happened this morning and you chose to park on ice?”

Fair point.

Here’s a link to our phone setup, it’s only $7/month for the most basic service but that’s all we needed. You can certainly add on more features like caller ID, address book etc. If you have kids, you should get one, in case of mice.

https://www.ooma.com/home-phone-service