Ironic deaths

The Grim Reaper has a morbid sense of humor, as exemplified by these recent news items:

On Tuesday, a Slovenian man who had spent years appealing the decision to have his 3 vicious dogs put down was attacked and killed by them. Last month, an Australian man celebrating his 70th birthday by making a tandem parachute jump lost consciousness and died during the skydive. Also in December, a 420lb British man called for an ambulance but died outside his home when the stretcher collapsed. In September, a Ukrainian man died in Spain when he was crushed by a woman who committed suicide by jumping from an 8th-floor balcony. In November 2008, a Brazilian woman was killed when her husband's casket struck her neck when the hearse driving them to the cemetery was in an accident.

Occasionally, hunting dogs or pets have been known to shoot their owners with their own guns - but only sometimes are those wounds fatal. In Memphis, Tennessee, in August 2007, a great dane knocked a .22-caliber pistol off the table and shot his owner in the back, and in Los Banos, California, last month, a black laborador retriever stepped on his owner's loaded shotgun and hit him in the back. In Tama, Iowa, in October 2007, a man hunting pheasants was shot in the calf with a shotgun by one of his dogs. In Pensacola, Florida, in September 2004, a man in the process of euthanizing 7 shepherd-mix puppies for which he couldn't find homes was shot in the wrist with his revolver by one of the 3-month-old dogs. But in Stowell, Texas, in January 2008, a chocolate laborador fired a fatal shot into his owner's leg while they were duckhunting by stepping on the gun as it lay in the back of their pick-up truck and severing an artery, causing the hunter to bleed to death on the way to the hospital. The Grim Reaper will find a way, even when the safety is on...