and one last tailbone tale. once my dog bigsby treed a racoon and snapped and to his and my surprise and horror, the beautiful bushy striped tail popped off in bigsby's teeth. i apologized profusely, but the racoon, looking desolate, clinging to a too low branch was like, just get thee hence, motherfuckers, apologies not accepted. 
so maybe it's karma. karma's a kick in the ass when you think it's all forgotten.