It's cold. It's raw. It's soggy. It's rainy.

You decide, "To heck with it. I've had enough of home confinement. I'm fishing, anyway. I can't take it anymore."

Good for you.

Just grab your sunglasses on the way out the door.

"Wishful thinking?" you ask.

Hardly.

Consider it a little preemptive advice. It could save you the kind of agony young Ryley O'Connell endured recently.

A word to the wise: This story is not the for the squeamish. It's why I'm choosing to sit down as I recount it for you ...

Ryley, 11, of Waterville, was at summer camp. He was spending some time at the Bryant Pond 4-H Camp and Learning Center, and on a day of questionable weather -- so much like all of them have been during the past few weeks -- he was fishing out of a canoe with a friend of his on Hutchinson Pond in Albany.

A couple of summer campers, young boys enjoying the summer and the outdoors at the same time. After a few casts, Ryley's friend hooked a tree limb hanging down over the shore line, quite accidentally of course. He began trying to tug his lure free.

Your vivid imagination will lead you to what happened next.

And, yes, it was that bad. I know. I've seen the photographs.

"He was yanking on it as hard as he could to get it out, and you guessed it," Ryley's mother, Shelley O'Connell said. "It came flying back right into Ryley's eyeball."

One of the treble hooks -- for the uninitiated, that's the 3-pronged type of hook you see on most lures -- completely embedded itself in Ryley's right eye.

What followed was five long hours of suffering, the kind of suffering that makes your own eyes water just from having to think about it.

Ryley was taken to nearby Stephens Memorial Hospital in Norway, to specialists in Auburn and eventually back to Stephens Memorial.

"Nothing like having a rooster tail with a treble hook hanging from your face for five hours," Shelley said.

At Stephens, Ryley underwent two hours of surgery to remove the hook. When it was over, doctors feared he may have lost his eyesight.

Remarkably, though, that wasn't the case.

Though his vision was "a little blurry" afterwards and not the 20/20 he had before, Ryley could see.

"By some miracle he can see," Shelley said. "It's not perfect (vision) like he had, but at least he can see, and he's doing fine. They may have to do surgery again on his retina, but we are waiting to make sure he comes out of this and it doesn't get infected."

The moral of the story is obvious.

Wear sunglasses when you -- or anyone around you, for that matter -- have a rod in hand. It may be cloudy, it may be raining, or you may not even think you're putting in a "serious" effort by fishing from shore for a few free minutes in the afternoon. Still, better to be safe than sorry.

Who among us hasn't hooked our own fingers or cheeks or various appendages? But Ryley O'Connell's story is one that reminds us that the consequences exist which are far more serious than a little trickle of blood from a finger or a scrape on a cheek.

While you're at it, throw a hat on too, just for good measure.

"Tell everyone you know, because you never imagine that it will happen to you," Shelley said. "Tell everyone to have their kids wear glasses --always -- because this can happen."

It happened to Ryley.

Travis Barrett -- 621-5648

tbarrett@centralmaine.com