Earlier this month we told you about the man in Italy who stood up during mass and gouged out his eyes right there in front of all his fellow worshipers. Then last weekend, a bull gored Spanish bullfighter Juan Jose Padilla through the face and the eye and rendered Padilla blind in that eye.

And now comes the story of a 28-year-old California woman who, the Orange County Register informs us, "reportedly ran naked through a motel, inhaled fumes from a fire extinguisher and attempted to gouge out one of her eyes." Police found her "scratching at one of her eyes so intensely that it was nearly ripped from the socket." She did not succeed in her endeavor, but police found blood on the floor. The authorities say they're not sure if she was trying to kill herself or get high off the fire extinguisher or what, but in any case, scratching at her eyes seems completely unnecessary and is probably something she wouldn't have been doing had someone been there with her.

Aside from this new California case, we've recently read about eye-gougings in Cairo, in Malawi, and on the soccer ("football") fields. Maybe eye-gougings happen every day and we don't hear about them, but the number of high-profile cases in such a short time period has opened our eyes to this problem, and now we feel obligated to address it.

So: Everybody please stop gouging out your eyes. Stop putting your eyes in situations where they might be gouged out for you, by some irate creature or a flying object. And don't—seriously, DON'T!—gouge out other people's eyes. (This applies to you too, horned animals.) These stories are disgusting and horrific and freak out lots of people at a time when many of already have enough worries and fears to overwhelm us. Mutilating other living things is criminal. Mutilating yourself is no better. Sometimes people have mental issues that cause them to mutilate themselves; if you know such a person please do something to help them, if you can, so they don't harm themselves by gouging out their eyes.

Save the eyes!

[OC Register. Image via Shutterstock]