What to do When You Get Jumped by Cholla Balls

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• published: 16 Jul 2013
• views: 3088

A quick tutorial on what you should do when you find yourself bound by jumping cholla cactus balls! 1) Stop moving and calmly assess the situation and what tools you have to work with! 2) Don't try to walk to your car if the cholla ball can in any conceivable way hit your other leg or pierce skin elsewhere. 3) Maneuver your clothing so that the cholla ball cannot pierce your skin (or additional skin elsewhere if your skin has already been pierced). 4) Use shoes, branches, or rocks to pinch it and pull it off. 5) Take your time to inspect your skin for tiny spine breaches; if you feel a tiny bit of pain upon skin contact anywhere, use long fingernails or rocks to scrape along the skin there in different directions until it's gone. 6) Take your time to inspect all clothing and shoes for residual spines---you don't want spines in your car! I have a full-feature video on the jumping cholla cactus on my channel; this species is actually the teddy-bear cholla, or Cylindropuntia bigelovii. The balls are easily-detachable stems that help the plant propagate, and the spines are modified leaves! In most cases the spines are just painful to deal with, but some people can get nasty infections! Click here to browse through all of my plant videos: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLWiEPkBTXi6ueLQWIaeoHAH0ro2GjiNCW