SEKIU — Cory Davis, 56, had just finished stoking her cast-iron stove to heat her home when something inside it exploded.
With a loud bang, she was struck on the inside of her left calf.
“I kept thinking, ‘geeze that was one fast hot coal flying at me,'” she said, with a laugh.
“But it wasn’t a coal.”
It was part of a 22-gauge shotgun shell that had been accidentally placed in the stove along with some newspaper.
Davis said a case of the ammo had spilled in her home, located at Hoko-Ozette Road, about a month ago.
She thinks one shell was in newspaper she had used to light the stove.
“There’s always that one problem stray,” she said.
“And of course, it got me.”
Davis said she removed the metal fragment from her wound early Sunday morning, then visited Forks Community Hospital on Monday.
A doctor cleaned the wound and gave her a tetanus shot.
The wound was shallow and didn’t require any more treatment, said Sgt. Brian King of the Clallam County Sheriff’s Department.
King said that because of his concern that the shell might have been discharged from a firearm, the doctor contacted the Clallam County Sheriff’s Department.
No remnants of the shell were found inside the wound.
King said a similar incident injured a hunter several years ago.
In that case, bullets had fallen into a fire while the hunters were sleeping.
One of the hunters was hit in a leg.
Though her leg hurts, Davis manages to find humor in it all.
“How many people get shot by your stove?” she said, laughing.
