ON GUNS AND SQUIRRELS!
I have a confession to make. As a youngster, I enjoyed blasting away at helpless little animals and birds: to demonstrate my skills as a marksman, to impress my friends and, just maybe, for the sheer pleasure of the kill.
I somehow convinced my long-suffering mother to buy me a BB gun when I was about nine years old. I argued that my friends had them; that they weren’t dangerous; that I’d be very careful; and that I’d saved up the money to buy one. So, after enduring my incessant whining, she eventually relented. I picked up the gun at the Post Office one day, bought some BBs at the Co-op, and ran home to practice shooting at cans and bottles in the back yard.
A couple of years after that, I convinced Mom to let me buy a pellet gun with money I’d saved up from my paper route. I had over thirty Journal-Pioneer customers and was paid the princely sum of one-half cent per paper; that’s about a dollar per week, plus tips. I was a good saver!
The pellet gun was far more powerful than the BB gun, and it got me into trouble the first day I had it. For some stupid reason, I aimed at our oil tank filter and hit it on my first shot. Furnace oil dripped onto the ground and I knew I was in big trouble. How would I explain this one to Mom?
I ran to the store and told her I’d made a hole in the oil tank filter. "But it wasn’t my fault! I aimed at the hinge on the garage door and struck it dead on. The pellet ricocheted off the hinge and came straight back and hit the oil tank filter. Honest to God, Mom!", I pleaded. Fortunately for me, she bought my story and no more was said about it. I’d learned my lesson.
The pellet gun and I were inseparable. I took it with me on my many trips to the woods and, especially, when I went to check my rabbit snares. I hoped I could kill a rabbit with the pellet gun, but it just wasn’t powerful enough. I needed a .22 rifle for that.
Cousin Aubrey, four years older than me, had one. He often took it with him when we went to the woods, which was practically every day after school and on Saturdays in the fall. One day, we were walking back to the village through George Bishop’s field. It was my turn to carry the gun.
Out of the corner of my eye, I spied a partridge standing at the edge of the woods. I whispered: "Partridge!", a signal for the others to stop in their tracks while I took aim. I lifted the gun to my cheek, peered down the v-notch sight, and ligned up my shot. Bang! Flutter of wings; feathers flying in all directions! "I got him!", I cried, "And right through the head too!"
Sure enough, the poor animal was mortally wounded. I picked him up and my proud feet hardly struck the ground as I walked home to show Mom. She was both surprised and impressed, and that roasted partridge was the tastiest fowl I’d ever eaten.
For my thirteenth birthday, I got my own .22 rifle. Today, it’s hard to imagine letting a thirteen-year-old have his own rifle, powerful enough to kill another person. But, I suppose Mom figured I could be into worse things than hunting and spending my spare time trudging through Fidèle Gallant’s woods. After the rifle came the .410 shotgun.
While I ate all the rabbits, ducks and partridges I shot, I didn’t eat the squirrels. Oh no! Those I shot for sport, for the pure pleasure of seeing them fall out of the tree. I had dozens of squirrel tails nailed to the wall in our garage. Not that they were easy to kill, hiding as they did in the tops of fir and spruce trees, but I was a pretty good shot.
Fast-forward to 2010. Elva and I live in Sherwood in a comfortable house with a nice yard where we’ve raised our three children. I hear the occasional pitter-patter of little feet, thinking a bird is scurrying back and forth across our roof or in one of the gutters. One morning though, the racket sounds like it’s coming from just above the ceiling of our family room.
I call the pest control guy and he talls me: "You’ve got squirrels, buddy. And it sounds to me like they’re building a nest around your bathtub. Buddy, if I answered every squirrel call I get, I wouldn’t have time for anything else. Here’s what you do..."
So off I went to Home Hardware to get some rat traps. "Put a slice of apple about the size of a Toonie on the trigger and spread a bit of peanut butter on it", the pest control guy had told me. "And make sure you attach the trap to something solid with a wire or a nail. ‘Cause them squirrels can drag a trap right with them if they ain’t dead!"
I placed three traps in the yard where I thought the squirrels might come across them. While setting the third one, I heard the second one snap. "Damn", I thought. "I didn’t set it right." But set it right I had. I had my first squirrel, dead as a doornail!
Twenty-nine squirrels later, we left our home on Ash Drive and settled into our condo in downtown Charlottetown, comfortable in the thought we’d left the yard work, the bugs and the four-legged critters behind for someone else to look after. And so we had ... until last Super Bowl Sunday when I heard the tell-tale pitter-patter of little feet above my head once again!
My cycling buddies, regaled often by stories of my varmint-trapping prowess, snorted: "It’s good enough for you! It took a while, but word spread from Sherwood to downtown that you were a squirrel hater, and the locals decided to get their revenge!" Four of the buggers have met their maker since I got the traps out again...
A few weeks ago, a friend sent me this endearing photo of a male squirrel in considerable distress, perhaps thinking it would tug at my heart strings and weaken my resolve. It didn’t.
If you’re wondering, my hunting days are over, and have been since my early twenties. Our three children were raised without the presence of guns and none of them owns one. I have friends who hunt for game, and I respect their right and desire to do so, but I’ve lost the urge myself. I don’t believe in owning a gun for self-protection. I hope the time never comes when I’ll feel I have to; I’d rather move.
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