On one of his training calls during paramedic school my friend Mike was called to a trailer in one of the many mobile home parks in southern California. The resident of this particular mobile home had died...several days before. And now the neighbors were just noticing the smell. After forcing entry to the trailer and making their way around all the trash on the floor the crew found the Dead Guy face down in a moldy, half eaten plate of scrambled eggs. Mike's preceptor and their other partner stood around the kitchen/dining room area of the cramped trailer with their arms folded watching Mike run down the exam to confirm that the Dead Guy was truly and completely, once and for all, dead. He attached the cardiac monitor and printed out a copy of the rhythm showing no heart activity, he even listened for heart and lung sounds. The preceptor and his partner exchanged looks with the cop that was there with them as if to say, "Rookies, you can't be more dead than this Dead Guy." Then they noticed something on the table that made them chuckle.

After the call, while stopping for a cup of coffee (that the preceptor made Mike pay for) he told Mike during the typical critique of every call, "OK, we really have to work on your 'tunnel vision', you need to pay closer attention on scene to your surroundings. You may miss something really important is if you don't".

"What do you mean I thought I was doing well", Mike said.

"Oh, your doing OK on your medicine and your 'book smarts' but you need some 'scene smarts' too. Lets take this last call as an example", replied his preceptor, "you really screwed up by not being aware of your surroundings on that one! You are lucky it wasn't a really dangerous foul up. We all have to know what is going on around us at all times for our own safety as well as our patients".

"What the heck you mean?" asked Mike, "that was a simple coroners case. The Guy had been dead for days!"

"Lets see Mike", said the instructor, "describe the scene in as much detail as you can."

"Hmm, we got to the mobile home and had to force entry. When we got inside I found this guy dead sitting at the kitchen table. He was rigorous and had dependent lividity and decomposition had started to set in. The whole place was totally filthy. Stains on the walls and trash everywhere, about a weeks worth of dirty dishes in the kitchen and the whole place smelled like the Dead Guy. Oh yeah, and I had to keep shoving his cat off the table so I could check his condition".

"Aha, now we can cut to the chase, tell me about the Dead Guy's cat, Mike, what did it look like?"

"I don't get what you mean , it was a big old black cat. Pretty big for a house cat too."

"I'll give you some slack on this one being you are from the Bay Area, I don't know what the cats in the Bay Area look like, but down here in L.A. our cats have fluffy tails and not skinny pink ones. Did this cat that you kept pushing away from the Dead Guy have a fluffy tail or a long, skinny pink tail?"

"He uh, well, I think he had a long, skinny pink tail...................oh shit.................that wasn't a cat..........."

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