If it isn't one thing, it's a chunk of orange rubber

Last weekend we had a playdate and made green goo.  It's fantastic stuff, a mixture of Elmer's glue, water, borax and food coloring.  Once they are mixed, it becomes a stretchy shiny slime.  Similar to silly putty, but not quite as stretchy.  The boys have been playing with it ever since.  Little Dog in particular has been enamored of the special sludge.  His hands are stained green from the food color I added in generous quantities to turn it a brilliant shamrock green.  We have a special mat in the living room designated as the safe play area for the stuff since I don't want it ground into my furniture in any quantity.  It's fun to seem him so engaged in play with something we made together.  On the downside, he's been tempted to put the stuff into his mouth, up his nose and in his ears.  In fact, we've been having to remind him not to do these things on a very regular basis.
The other night, Little Dog was playing with the goo when a strange looked crossed his face.
"What?" I asked him, wondering what he was up to.
"I put it in my ear and it disappeared!" he said, "It went right into my brain!"
"Don't put it in your ear!" I loudly reminded him as  I dove down to peer into his ear.
I didn't see anything, and later that evening he showed up with a piece of the goo dried in his hair.  I assumed that the tiny chunk from his ear had fallen out into his hair and hardened.  I reminded him not to pull a repeat of this stunt, and worked the dried sludge from his hair.  And all seemed fine and good.

Fine and good until this morning, that is.  Little Dog was sitting on my lap and when I looked at him, I caught a glimpse of something dark in his ear.  I took a closer look and saw what looked like dark ear wax building up in his ear.  Not good.  See we're a family with a long history of severe ear infections.  Dark ear wax is frequently the first sign before the screaming starts and the antibiotics are prescribed.  I got a q-tip to verify and when I swiped away the ear wax something green appeared at the edge of the ear canal.  Shit.  The green goo.  I tried to catch the edge of it with the swab and something went wrong.  Instead of getting the green goo out, I manged to push it further into the ear.  And then the screaming started.  Feel free to lecture me on proper Q-tip use, I know, I know, but I didn't venture into the ear canal, just tried to pin the edge of the goo and sweep it out.  After  a few minutes of screaming, I decided we needed to take him to the ER, this was certainly not normal screaming and if there was a chunk of goo in his ear since the other night, it was probably hardened and could possibly do real damage.
We went to Children's Hospital as a family, because that's how we do things.  We were quickly screened, checked in and taken to a room.  Soon the doctor came in to check things out.  When she looked into the ear, she was a little confused.  "I see something, but I'm not sure that's it," she said.  "I'm going to get  another doctor to take a peek, then we'll try to take it out."
The next doctor came pretty quickly and spotted the object immediately. "We'll flush it out with saline.  We should probably sedate him a bit if you think there is going to be a struggle."  And we did so they did.

Little Dog was dosed with Versed and when he appeared relaxed and mildly sedated, the doctors returned.  Mr. Dog and Big Dog went to the waiting room while I stayed to help hold Little Dog.   Three syringes full of warmed saline manged to loosen the object and move it to a point where it could be moved with some kind of ear scraper.  Once it was in a good position, tiny forceps were used to grab it and when the doctor declared victory he held up a piece of bright orange rubber.  WTF? 
"What is that?" I asked, caught unprepared for the orange chunk in place of the anticipated green goo.
After Mr. Dog and Big Dog returned,  we decided it was likely a piece of the straw on Little Dog's water bottle.  Though when asked if he put that in his ear, he flatly denied it.
"Then how did it get in there?" asked Mr. Dog.
"Maybe it just snuck in," suggested Little Dog.  Somehow, I'm not buying it.

Great summer trip....to the ER

Since Mr. Dog spends so many weekends working on our third world hovel house, it is always a treat when we have some project free weekend time to do all that normal family stuff. This was one of those weekends, and we'd been enjoying it. Saturday we spent hours at the park, went out to lunch and then lounged around the house. No trip to Tahiti, but a great summer day in the sun. Sunday, although we had some afternoon projects planned, we decided start the day with a family walk in the neighborhood. Get the kids and dogs out for a bit of exercise, then hit the local toy store on the way home.

We'd fed the kids, an I just needed to finish pulling myself together, so Mr.Dog deciding to take advantage of the downtime said "I'm going to do a little work outside while you eat and get dressed, then we can go." Sure, since I wasn't ready, why not use that time to make some progress? I'll tell you why, within minutes Mr. Dog reappeared gripping his bloody mangled finger. "You need to take me to the ER."
Yes, every great weekend walk starts with a trip to the ER, right? Turns out in trying to save time putting the yard waste bin out to gather up the lilac branches he'd piled in the driveway, Mr.Dog decided to put it over the fence, instead of opening our broken gate because it would be easier. Well, easier, if by easier you mean more likely to crush your finger and rip the tip off. So we packed the boys in the car, got to the hospital, got checked in and settled in. It didn't take long for the ER staff to bring crayons and coloring books for the boys, a very kind gesture on their part. However within minutes my stress level was going through the roof. I realized having both boys in the hospital rolling crayons all over the slick ER floor was only going to lead to further injury, and there was nothing to distract me from the gore of my husband's injury. As you may know Dr. Doug Ross and Dr. Luka Kovac only exist on TV, so I ushered the little troublemakers out of the hospital and over to a local coffee house with a children's play area. Mr. Dog was to call me when he could go home. Hours passed, the boys, full of chocolate milk and cookies grew bored of the play area. We packed up again and headed off to run any errand I could think of that might kill time. Bandages. We'd need bandages right?

While we were heading over to the store to stock up, Mr. Dog called, they were stitching the top of his finger back on, he had managed to break the bone in the very tip of his finger as an extra bonus, but he should be able to go soon. Unfortunately, "soon" means different things to different people. We thought 15-20 minutes, in ER speak, it means more like another hour. Most of the delay was because Mr. Dog has a penicillin allergy, so after injecting him with antibiotics they wanted him to stick around and see if he would survive the treatment. Since he was in the waiting room, we thought we'd join him, but again, little boys and hospitals don't mix. My two little monkeys decided that the waiting room chairs made great climbers and I feared further injuries, so back out to the car we went. Finally Mr Dog was cleared to go home.
Our walk, needless to say, never happened.