Mon Mar 8, 8:52 AM ET Add Oddly Enough – Reuters to My Yahoo! <\/p>\n
SYDNEY (Reuters) – An Australian handyman admitted he was stupid to shoot himself in the head with a nail gun in a misguided prank that left him with a nail lodged in his brain. <\/p>\n
Brad Shorten, a father of three from Victoria state, was enjoying a few beers with friends after working on his house when they began joking about industrial accidents. <\/p>\n
Shorten, 33, picked up a nail gun that he thought was empty, pointed it at his head and pulled the trigger. <\/p>\n
He later said he had turned off the gun’s compressor and taken out its nail cartridge but did not realize there was still enough pressure in the gun to fire a nail. <\/p>\n
“My mates and I were talking about construction site accidents and taking your eye out with a nail gun, and I foolishly put the gun to my head and pulled the trigger,” Shorten told the Sunday Herald Sun newspaper. <\/p>\n
“I did a very stupid thing,” he said. <\/p>\n
The bizarre mishap left him with a 1.25-inch nail counter-sunk through his skull just behind his temple.<\/p>\n
Royal Melbourne Hospital neurosurgeons removed the nail in a delicate four-hour operation even though Shorten, who was expected to make a full recovery, had offered to take the nail out with a pair of pliers. <\/em><\/p>\n