I never come nearer'n to shootin me a squirrel than I done yesterday.
Normally, I fall into the category of non-killer. Unless you count insects and vegetation, I am not likely to be caught ending lives.
But yesterday, my roomate decided he'd had it up to here with the squirrels.
We live on an orange grove: my friend Tim, his girlfriend, myself, two cats, two turtles, six hens, a rooster, 115 citrus trees, and 50,000 squirrels.
We cannot plant anything, we cannot feed our chickens and we cannot erect shoddily constructed bird baths without the squirrels overtaking it and subsequently multiplying.
While I still find squirrels to be somewhat charming and cute, Tim assures me they are merely rats with bushy tails. "Yes," I say, "but rats have pointier faces." This does not dissuade him, and he decides something must be done about the "tree rats."
Tim owns a .22 rifle. He also owns a .38 and a compound bow, but those do not enter into this story. I have, to the best of my knowledge, never owned a projectile weapon of any sort, and never envisioned myself as the type of person who might, at a given moment, be found "shootin' varmints."
So, Tim and I went outside to find the usual swarm of seed-theivin' tree rats. He promptly shot one in the neck from 50 feet, dropping it cold. I was impressed. Oddly, I felt no pity for the thing. It obviously hadn't suffered, and we had actually accomplished something we had set out to do.
Squirrels, though, are very perceptive. You can set off firecrackers all day long, and squirrels will still hang around. But the moment you shoot a gun, they dissapear. All day. They know. They know that something is going down and they don't want any part of it.
We sat outside for hours, Tim and me. We drank, of course. Quite a bit. But we didn't shoot. I'd like to think I would've tried shooting the gun, even try shooting a squirrel, after seeing Tim's prowess. I'm sure I would not have come close. At worst, I would've maimed some poor dumb animal, but I would've tried.
Today, as usual, Tim keeps his guns in his closet where I won't get them, and rightfully so. I am not the gun-messin-around-with type. All I can really do now is chuck oranges at the squirrels to scare them off. Good thing I'm not that great a thow either, as a hard piece of fruit at 50 miles per hour could be even messier business than a neat little gunshot.
Tim once killed a possum with an orange, but that is another story....
Normally, I fall into the category of non-killer. Unless you count insects and vegetation, I am not likely to be caught ending lives.
But yesterday, my roomate decided he'd had it up to here with the squirrels.
We live on an orange grove: my friend Tim, his girlfriend, myself, two cats, two turtles, six hens, a rooster, 115 citrus trees, and 50,000 squirrels.
We cannot plant anything, we cannot feed our chickens and we cannot erect shoddily constructed bird baths without the squirrels overtaking it and subsequently multiplying.
While I still find squirrels to be somewhat charming and cute, Tim assures me they are merely rats with bushy tails. "Yes," I say, "but rats have pointier faces." This does not dissuade him, and he decides something must be done about the "tree rats."
Tim owns a .22 rifle. He also owns a .38 and a compound bow, but those do not enter into this story. I have, to the best of my knowledge, never owned a projectile weapon of any sort, and never envisioned myself as the type of person who might, at a given moment, be found "shootin' varmints."
So, Tim and I went outside to find the usual swarm of seed-theivin' tree rats. He promptly shot one in the neck from 50 feet, dropping it cold. I was impressed. Oddly, I felt no pity for the thing. It obviously hadn't suffered, and we had actually accomplished something we had set out to do.
Squirrels, though, are very perceptive. You can set off firecrackers all day long, and squirrels will still hang around. But the moment you shoot a gun, they dissapear. All day. They know. They know that something is going down and they don't want any part of it.
We sat outside for hours, Tim and me. We drank, of course. Quite a bit. But we didn't shoot. I'd like to think I would've tried shooting the gun, even try shooting a squirrel, after seeing Tim's prowess. I'm sure I would not have come close. At worst, I would've maimed some poor dumb animal, but I would've tried.
Today, as usual, Tim keeps his guns in his closet where I won't get them, and rightfully so. I am not the gun-messin-around-with type. All I can really do now is chuck oranges at the squirrels to scare them off. Good thing I'm not that great a thow either, as a hard piece of fruit at 50 miles per hour could be even messier business than a neat little gunshot.
Tim once killed a possum with an orange, but that is another story....
And yeah, getting laid is easier said that done. But when you are two and a half years into a relationship with someone, and you live together, getting laid ought to be as easy as saying so. Emphasis on "ought to be."
I'm not like that anymore, I don't even kill spiders, but for a while it was like William Munny with a Red Ryder, harbinger of doom dispensing air-powered genocide for small woodland creatures.