The truly unfortunate tale of the man who died after shooting a cactus
Tom Wood
Featured Image Credit: New York Times/Deborah Howe/Alamy Stock Photo
If you consider yourself unlucky, you’ll probably have to just accept that you’re not as unlucky as David Grundman, who died after he shot at a cactus.
Now that is seriously unlucky.
We’ve all done stupid stuff, and usually we get away with it.
However, Grundman did something really daft back in 1982, and it ended up costing him his life.
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Grundman was messing around with a saguaro cactus, which is a protected variety of plant, but this particularly one certainly didn’t seem to need the protection.
After he shot the spiky plant with his shotgun, a part of the cactus fell off and crushed him to death whilst impaling him as well.
For whatever reason, Grundman had decided to travel into the desert near to Mount Pleasant in Arizona.
Also, he’d brought his shotgun with him with the intention of firing off a few rounds at a cactus.
After doing so on a smaller cactus, he then picked on a very large cactus, firing off a few rounds into the plant, which was around 26 feet tall and could have been as old as 100 years.
He must have been stood pretty close to it, because a falling arm of the large and strangely humanoid cactus landed straight on him.
He died shortly afterwards, as it is believed that the huge and hard spikes from the cactus impaled him and left him unable to cry out for help.
It’s pretty remote out there, too.
The unlikelihood of this sad event makes it quite a popular story, even serving to inspire a song to be written by Texan band the Austin Lounge Lizards.
The saguaro cactus is the largest variety of cactus found in Arizona, and it’s protected because it quite literally only grows in the Sonoran Desert.
As is usually the case, the biggest problem for them is – you’ve guessed it – humans.
The iconic cacti are not only an important symbol of the area, but they’re also a decent source of shelter for creatures that live in the often-challenging desert habitat.
That means that cutting them down is illegal and – as we’ve discovered – dangerous.
Anyone found to have deliberately vandalised one of the cacti or cutting one down faces felony criminal damage charges. That carries a maximum sentence of 25 years, though you might be unlikely to actually receive such a hefty sentence.
Of course, there’s also the cautionary tale of David Grundman to consider before you go out messing around with them.
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