THE BOY WITH A SPIKE IN HIS HEAD

Xavier Cunningham fell onto a rotisserie skewer and impaled his face. Doctors couldn’t believe he was still alive.

- Bonnie Munday

Xavier Cunningham was having fun that warm Saturday afternoon in September 2018 with his buddies Silas and Gavon. Xavier, a bubbly, energetic 10-year-old, enjoyed playing in the yard behind his house in Harrisonville, Missouri.

That day, the trio was chucking around a stainless-steel skewer, throwing it into the ground like a spear. At 43 centimetres long and more than half a centimetre thick, the square-edged skewer was used to rotisserie meat; one end had four sharp prongs attached.

Eventually, they ditched the skewer near a neighbour’s tree house, sticking it in the ground with the four prongs anchoring it. With the neighbour’s permission, they climbed the three-metre ladder. Up top, a few yellow-jacket wasps buzzed around. “If we don’t bother them, they won’t bother us,” said Xavier.

But the boys hadn’t seen the large wasp nest wrapped around part of the tree house. Soon the insects were coming at the panicked boys thick and fast, in a dense black cloud. “I’ll get my mom!” Xavier yelled, but now he stared, frightened, at the tree-house ladder, which was covered in a seething mass of angry wasps. This is going to hurt, he thought. His hands crunched on the insects and the stings were painful as he grasped each rung, going as carefully and quickly as he could.

When he was about halfway down, a wasp painfully stung the thin skin of a knuckle on his left hand. As he swatted at it with his right, he lost his balance and fell, face down. Just before breaking his fall with his arms, he felt a sting just under his left eye. Was that a wasp? he thought. Then he realized he’d landed on the metal skewer. Nearly half of it was buried in his head. Screaming, he got up and ran toward home.