Tacky statues in your garden may be all that stands between you and death.
Just ask Bessie Weidle. She was saved from serious injury or death by a painted-cement reindeer that adorned her garden. It's true.
The story is so strange that Weidle, who lives in Rhode Island, was written up in the National Enquirer. She was even a guest on Late Night with David Letterman, appearing as part of "Stupid Human Tricks."
Weidle was only too happy to explain the strange -- and now funny -- "Stupid Human Trick" that demolished her beloved reindeer statue, but also saved her life. The smiling reindeer, which once stood 4-feet tall including its antlers, ended up wedged beneath an errant car and her bed. But Rudolph died a hero.
"That's what helped save my life," Bessie said in a telephone interview. "It was propping up the car. The car would have been right on top of me. One wheel was even resting on my shoulder. It was so close that my husband had to push down on the mattress so I could get out."
The car was her own, she said. Three teen-agers had run their car into her parked car, pushing it through a wall of the house and crashing right into her bedroom.
"It knocked my husband right out of bed," Bessie said. "I never even woke up. I remember him shaking me to wake up, saying we'd been in an accident. I told him, 'Don't be waking me up.'"
Said husband, Edgar: "She got kind of grumpy when I told her to get up. She was still asleep, believe it or not."
Letterman, in his interview with Bessie, had more than a few laughs upon hearing the story. When he showed the photographs of the accident and then the picture of the reindeer before the accident, Letterman just stared in disbelief as the audience roared.
Bessie handled the spotlight like a pro. "She did pretty good, didn't she?" Edgar said.
Edgar escaped with a few bumps and bruises. Miraculously, Bessie escaped without a scratch. In the excitement right after the accident, Edgar and Bessie were busy keeping their grown son from attacking the teen-agers. Their son had just come home for the evening, and caught the culprits piling out of their car.
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