SHAWNEE, Kan. - George Chandler says he didn't know a 2 1/2-inch nail was driven into his skull until his buddy spotted it stuck through his cap. Chandler said he felt only a sting. "It never did really what you call hurt," the Shawnee man said Wednesday on NBC's "Today."

Chandler said his friend Phil Kern was using a nail gun to mount lattice on Chandler's deck when a hose on the powerful tool became caught.

Chandler said he stood up just as Kern tried to free the gun and it discharged. At first, they couldn't locate the nail. But then Kern saw it, he ordered Chandler to sit down while he called 911.

An emergency room doctor tried unsuccessfully to remove the nail with a pair of pliers.

"He looked at me and said, 'I need a claw hammer,'" Chandler recalled. "I thought, 'Ah, he's just teasing.'"

So the doctor borrowed a claw hammer from a worker to finish the job and sent Chandler home with a few stitches.

"He got a screwdriver at the same time, and he took the screwdriver and pried the nail up a little bit and got the claw hammer," Chandler said.

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Fire crew to the rescue of trapped puppy

By TIM CHAPMAN AND EVAN S. BENN

tchapman@MiamiHerald.com

TIM CHAPMAN / MIAMI HERALD STAFF

A wet puppy clings to the hands of Sherry Marts of Miami-Dade Animal Services after being pulled from a storm drain.

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Using sophisticated rescue equipment -- and two cans of dog food as bait -- a Miami Fire Rescue team managed to rescue a trapped puppy from a storm drain under Interstate 95 on Wednesday.

The fire department got the call about 10 a.m. after a couple walking near Northwest Sixth Avenue and 75th Street saw a female dog pacing on top of a metal storm-drain grate and heard a helpless puppy whimpering below, Fire Rescue spokesman Ignatius Carroll said.

Because of the dangerous gases that can be present in a sewer, the department's Tactical Rescue Team suited up in full gear, with air tanks. After attempts to bait the dog with Pedigree failed, firefighters Roly Entinosa and John Hinton went down separate manholes on opposite sides of the puppy.

''Our last resort was to put firefighters into the tunnel and have them crawl through to rescue the puppy, and that's what had to be done,'' Carroll said.

Hinton grabbed the 9-week-old shepherd mix and handed her to Entinosa, who passed the pup to rescuers waiting at street-level.

When the puppy surfaced safe and sound, its mother couldn't contain her excitement, licking and nuzzling her pup.

''It was a real positive outcome,'' Carroll said. ``We even found a home for the puppy.''

A city 911 dispatcher who received the initial call about the trapped puppy left work and drove to the scene. When the puppy was rescued, the dispatcher asked to adopt her, Carroll said.

Both dogs were being checked out by animal control workers. The firefighters had to be hosed down and decontaminated after their crawl through the storm drain, but they are expected to be OK, Carroll said.