A human leg's saga takes on a life of its own

No matter where you live, there are really stupid and creepy people around you. Now we all do stupid and creepy things once in a while but some people are so stupid, it’s a miracle they survived beyond their childhood years. Some are so creepy; it’s a wonder if they have any friends. I am now going to tell you a tale of a really stupid creepy person.

John Wood, of Greenville, South Carolina unfortunately lost his left leg after a 2004 plane crash. His surgeon had no other choice but to amputated it. John decided to keep his leg in a container so that when he dies and he is cremated, he would be cremated as a whole man. That is unusual but I can appreciate where he is coming from.

He kept it in his freezer until his electricity was cut off. Then he hung it on a fence post to dry. He finally put it in his barbecue for safekeeping. Alas, he was forced to give up his home, so he put the barbecue in a rental storage facility. When he moved to Greenville and failed to keep up the payments, the facility auctioned the barbecue off without looking inside to see if anything was in it.

Shannon Whisnant, of Maiden, North Carolina, the main subject of this weird tale, bought the barbecue and later discovered what was inside it. After he got over the shock, he contacted the police lest they think it was the leg of someone he killed. The police tracked down the owner of the leg (that was easy—just call all the hospitals around the area) and then they turned it over to a funeral home where John Wood retrieved it.

In the meantime, Shannon Whisnant's entrepreneurial juices started flowing. He figured that after charging visitors – adults $3, children $1 – to look inside the empty barbecue, he reckoned he could do substantially better – $10 for adults, $5 for seniors, $1 for children – if its original contents were returned to him and placed back in the barbecue. Of course, amputees could look for free. What a nice man Shannon is, eh? He even thought that it could be a roadside exhibit where tourists would drive to see it. After all, his community of 3000 could benefit by getting all that attention. His ambitions grew. Maybe a book or a movie would be in the offering. Surely he would be interviewed on a talk show. I was the host of a TV talk show for five years and you couldn’t pay me enough money to put that stupid freak on my show.

Now comes the best part of this tale. He is threatening John Woods with court action. He wants what he paid for, returned to him.

Unfortunately, he gave up his right to the leg when he turned it over to the police. I would like to be a fly on the wall of that courtroom if he tries to get the judge to order John Woods to return his amputated leg to Shannon Whisnant. That stupid creepy entrepreneur would get about as much sympathy from the judge as would a wayward dog that inadvertently walks into a flea convention.