In a real-life interpretation of the biblical tale of Jonah and the Whale, Haans Galassi received quite the surprise the other day when his local sheriff's department contacted him with an unusual question. Detectives called Haans Galassi to ask if he wanted his finger back after they had found it in the belly of a trout.

Galassi says that his first impulse was to refuse the reunion. Two months ago, the 31-year-old lost four fingers on his left hand in a wakeboarding trip gone wrong. While wakeboarding on Priest Lake in Idaho, he was pulled along by a rope attached to a speedboat. He says that he noticed that the rope was too loose. When he tried to tighten it, the rope wrapped itself around his left hand.

Initially, the rope sent him careening into the water. Galassi says that he felt only numbness at first, but when he pulled his hand out of the water he realized that four of his fingers were missing. Galassi says that the reattachment would bring him too much pain.

Over the past two months, he has been learning how to get by without his missing fingers. He has learned to still grip things with his affected hand, like the steering wheel. But Galassi's new world was shifted when he received the phone call from the Bonner County Sheriff's Department. A fisherman had found the finger and put it in a freezer before calling the local sheriff's department.

"The lake is cold and deep so it was in remarkably good shape," Detective Gary Johnston said. "We'd fingerprinted it and sent it to the state lab to match what's on file and lo and behold they came back and said that's Haans' little finger." Though Galassi turned the offer down, the sheriff's department will continue to hold the digit in a freezer in case he changes his mind. And he still might. Galassi said that he put in a call to his doctor's office on the matter and is awaiting a call back.

RELATED STORIES