Note: A preview from my upcoming autobiography, Life’s Too Short to Smoke Cheap Cigars (Or to Drink Cheap Whiskey.)
Rats
Back In the Day…
Rattus Norveigus – the Norway Rat.
Ten-year olds with BB guns are frequently seen as a source of trouble, but my childhood friend Jon’s grandfather saw us as an opportunity.
BB-guns are an inexpensive and effective way of building small boys into expert marksmen. With an investment of a dollar’s worth of BBs, Jon and I spent many a happy afternoon slaying rows of pop-can soldiers, sniping at strategically hidden Coke cans, standing our ground against waves of oncoming Mountain Dew containers, and bringing down the dreaded 7-Up assault helicopters lofted into the air by a buddy. Many a happy hour was spent in carefully setting up the assault of enemy pop cans, and then fending off wave after wave of vicious foes as fast as we could pump our BB guns to send round copper retribution winging forth. After the wars ended, we would scrupulously gather our late foes into the large burlap sack we kept them in for re-use the next time we had to Make the World Safe for Democracy.
Jon’s grandfather, old Amos Hooper, watched our progress on occasions we fought our wars on the Hooper farm; he frequently found occasion to applaud our marksmanship. One day, he approached us with an intriguing proposition, one that he had no doubt picked up in conversation with my own grandfather, with whom I had struck similar deals.
“You boys are getting to be pretty good shots. How’d you like to help me with a problem?”
Rattus Norvegicus, the Farmer’s Bane
It seemed Grandpa Hooper’s corncrib had a major rat infestation. Poison and traps didn’t work; the Hooper corncrib rats were the end product of several decades of natural selection in an environment loaded with poison and traps. They chewed down the poison like it was candy; any bait in the traps was gleefully removed, and the traps snapped on air as the rats went away chuckling to themselves. Thus, Grandpa Hooper’s plan:
“You boys take your BB-guns and keep an eye on that there corncrib, and I’ll give ya a quarter for each dead rat.” Dizzying visions of wealth assailed us; the booming population of rats in that corncrib would keep us in pop cans and BBs for years to come. And my Grandpa had only offered a dime per rat!
Rats, on the other hand, tend to resist being converted into a medium of exchange for BBs. We figured our hard-learned stealth, honed by months of sneaking up on ground squirrels and chipmunks, would overcome the rat’s natural caution. We didn’t know rats very well.
No six-month African safari was ever planned with greater care than Jon and I displayed in planning our for-cash rat hunt. We calculated our approach into the Hooper corncrib with a thorough, meticulous care that would have done credit to Indiana Jones. Robert Ruark and Peter Hathaway Capstick would have been proud of how we figured prevailing winds and air currents around the ancient building, analyzed terrain features, and eventually concluded that we should take a stand behind the left-hand rear wheel of Grandpa Hooper’s John Deere, normally parked about twenty feet from the drive-in entrance to the crib.
On the Saturday morning following Grandpa Hooper’s offer, the sunrise found Jon and I huddled behind the tractor, awaiting the first sign of rats.
The first rat, a smallish adolescent, appeared just after the sun broke through the row of oaks on the east edge of the farmyard. Jon potted him nicely with one shot, the BB dropping the young, incautious rodent neatly in his tracks.
“That there is a quarter.” Jon gloated. “Only got to do that four times for a dollar!”
“I get the next one, then.”
My Grandpa’s actual corncrib.
The next rat was a larger specimen. We only say his nose at first, poking out from under the siding of the corncrib alongside the door. Gradually, he wormed his way under the siding until most of his head was in view; I sent a BB forthwith into his brain.
So far, so good. We were out two BBs, and up by fifty cents. What we didn’t realize is that the rats were on to us. At that moment, a conclave of rats was having a mission briefing under Grandpa Hooper’s corncrib. Their two casualties had galvanized the rat community; all able-bodied adults had joined the rat militia muster, and their battle plans were laid.
The rat offensive began with two large adults rushing us from the main door of the corncrib. We were ready for them, and a long summer plinking thrown pop cans had prepared us; the two rat scouts went down, dropped by two well-placed BBs. Jon and I didn’t have a good understanding of the concept of a “diversion” however; to our ill fortune, the rats did. While we were engaged in halting the banzai charge of the first two rats, several others were flanking us.
The main body of the rat assault hit Jon from his left. In retrospect, I imagine it was no more than three rats; at the time, I would have sworn an oath that there were at least a hundred rats running up Jon’s pant leg. With a screech like a band saw blade cutting sheet metal, Jon leaped about ten feet in the air.
Another rat leaped on my back before I could move. Like Jon, I levitated myself howling at least ten feet straight up.
But the rat offensive had underestimated the tenacity of two ten-year olds determined to obtain a supply of BBs.
On landing, Jon snatched up the first weapon to present itself – a stout cottonwood branch. A rat rushed him; Jon planted himself, swung, and with a stroke that would do Tiger Woods credit, drove the rat a good fifty feet. Another rat dashed between his legs; Jon knocked it skywards with an upstroke. At that point I managed to grab a shovel that was leaning against the tractors’ wheel and laid into the attacking rat army myself.
We laid about us with a fury that staggered belief. The rats drew back for a moment, leaving us gasping for breath, surrounded by a scattering of deceased rodents.
Then, with a swelling roar, the main body of the rat army poured out of the corncrib to the attack. We took one look at the onrushing horde, and then at each other. Only one course of action was reasonable to us; abandoning all pretense of valor, we turned tail and fled.
The Plan
An intolerable situation resulted. We simply couldn’t acknowledge defeat by a group of rodents. The three dollars we collected from Grandpa Hooper for the retrieved bodies of the first rat assault only whetted our appetites; a new strategy had to be found. After a week of planning, sketching, arguing, and collecting materials, we were ready to begin; for some days, the Hooper farmyard resounded with the sounds of sawing, hammering, and shouted instructions. Rope appeared strung between the corncrib roof and nearby trees; strange, Rube Goldberg contraptions of wood and tin took shape in the vicinity. Two days were spent hauling rocks from the creek some three-quarters of a mile distant. As part of our planned finale, we spent another day in gathering scrap metal, attacking pieces of pipe with a hacksaw, enlisting Grandpa Hooper’s aid with a spot of welding, and finally dragging a large gas-powered air compressor over to a spot near the planned area of operations.
The rats watched incuriously from under the sides of the corncrib; they were confident they could deal with whatever we threw at them; little did they know the surprises we had in store for the Rat Militia. After three days of sweating, hammering, climbing, and arguing, we were finally ready.
Came the morning of D-Day, the momentous day of the Great Rat War. The rising sun found Jon and I perched on the top of Amos Hooper’s tractor, parked squarely in front of the Corncrib of Doom.
The Execution
A rat scout emerged cautiously from under the siding. We held our fire. “Let them come. Let them come.” Jon repeated, ominously. Jon held in his left hand a rope, which ran through the branches of a tree to the roof of the corncrib; in his right, an odd-looking contraption of metal pipe, a large bent sheet metal hopper, and a compressed air line which hissed like an enraged bull snake as the air compressor chugged away behind us. I clutched my BB gun in my right hand, already sighted on the first rat scout to emerge; my left held a large soup can with a short piece of model-rocket fuse projecting from the top.
Grandpa Hooper watched from a safe distance, no doubt hoping his corncrib would survive intact. The rat scout nosed about for a moment, apparently not detecting us on our tractor perch. We waited in silence; our moment was at hand.
A moment after the scout disappeared under the side of the crib, two larger rats appeared in the doorway. After a perfunctory look around, they made for the side of the crib that still contained some of the previous year’s corn, intending to eat up some more of Grandpa Hooper’s profits. Jon looked at me; I looked back. We nodded. “Now!” we said, both at once. Raising my BB gun, I potted the larger of the two rats with a shot to the head.
The other rat dodged my second shot and ducked under the side of the building. Even at our distance we heard the scurrying of uncounted rat feet; the Rat Militia was mustering. They no doubt thought they had routed us once, and they could do it again.
Four rats burst from the open doorway, zigzagging with practiced skill; I nailed one on the fly, pumped my gun, nailed a second ten feet from the tractor. The third rat bravely tried to leap up on the tractor tire; he slipped and fell, landing in the dust right beneath us. Jon clobbered him with a large rock.
“Look!” Jon pointed. “Here they come from the side again!” The rats were trying the flanking maneuver again; we were ready. Fishing a butane lighter from my overalls pocket, I struck a flame and held it to the rocket fuse on the soup can; as soon as the fuse took, I tossed the can into the middle of the platoon of rats attempting to flank us. With a loud BOOM the half-pound of black gunpowder in the can blew the rat platoon into little rat bits; the survivors scattered in panic. A hot blast of air and grit blinded us for a moment; we recovered in time to see the main body of the rat army rushing us head-on.
Jon yanked the rope. A large sheet of plywood on the roof of the corncrib tipped, sending a rain of large river rocks down on the rat horde, killing and maiming several. Ducking and dodging, the rats came on; it was time for our piece de resistance.
We pictured it going something like this.
Jon stood up on the tractor’s hood, holding up our odd-looking contraption of pipe, hosing, wood grips and sheet-metal hopper; I stood up beside him, holding a gallon milk jug filled with #2 birdshot. As Jon opened the air valve on the contraption, I poured a large helping of shot into the hopper welded atop the pipe.
A solid stream of lead shot poured from the end of the pipe, driven by the high-pressure air from the compressor; Jon played the stream from our improvised BB machine gun over the attacking horde. I kept the hopper topped up as Jon fired away.
The rats attempted to regroup; wherever a leader emerged, Jon focused the stream of birdshot there for a moment, blowing away rats in a gust of lead. Another group attempted a flanking movement; Jon caught them, sending them howling away in a birdshot hurricane. The compressed air blast howled, and Jon and I roared in triumph.
Finally, the last few rat survivors fled, decamping the Hooper farm for greener pastures; we sent arcs of lead shot after them as they disappeared into the fields. It was to be many years before another rat appeared on the Hooper farm.
The Aftermath
Needless to say, Grandpa Hooper was delighted, as were we with the commissions for the day’s work. The rat war brought us enough proceeds for a new BB gun each, and enough BBs to keep us fighting pop can wars for years to come. And, best of all, Grandpa Hooper’s Corncrib of Doom held many a crop, safe from vermin, for many seasons to follow. The rats, however, were forced into safer quarters; it was that eventuality that found Jon and I knocking on the door of the neighboring farm some two weeks later. As the farmer answered the door, he was faced with two ten-year old boys dragging an air compressor, a length of hose, an odd-looking contraption made of pipe, and several jugs of lead shot.
“Hi!” we greeted the farmer. “We heard you have a rat problem! Have we got a deal for you!”
Nice. I always enjoy a good blitzkrieg on the rodent ghetto.
One of my favorite youtube channels. Not as bombastic, but still fun.
https://www.youtube.com/user/historichunter
Just wonderful. Great stuff, as usual, Animal.
Fantastic.
Two Iowa caucus polls out today.
Emerson: Sanders +9
USA Today: Biden + 6
The date ranges of the polls are exactly the same and cover basically the previous 3 days.
Very interesting to me. These polls are all over the place.
whoops. I didn’t notice this was a new one.
Seems apropos to me.
Fun story. ?
Alternative rat hunting technique: minks, ferrets, and dogs.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ymSBQDYjeM
at 6:40 you can hear a kid say “this is the coolest!” as the mink eat’s a rat’s brain.
My wife and I had 3 ferrets. They were a blast and we’ll have them again once the kids are little older. They were absolutely fearless and the three of them would encircle and play-attack the Doberman. She was a good sport about it… I have a picture somewhere of a ferret hanging in the air off the dog’s lip.
We never used them to hunt rats, but I did give them baby rats occasionally as a treat. They really enjoyed it. Some people use a rodent-only diet, but it was too expensive/too much work for us so we went dry kibble with rat supplements.
The ranchers in North Texas use barn rats. Which have a limited half-life, what with the rattlesnakes, coyotes, and owls. They restock at the animal shelters.
Pater Dean had an unusually long run with some at one of his barns. Got into I think the third generation, which had some freakishly small cats, cats with six toes, that kind of thing. Then, in a week or so, around a dozen cats just . . . vanished.
Speaking of cats, one of my neighbors has a trail camera aimed at the wash behind our house. It caught a mountain lion recently, and our dogsitter saw something very briefly he couldn’t identify in front of our house last week that I’m thinking may been a mountain lion.
The ranchers in North Texas use barn
ratscatsOh, and yeah, I’m going to start carrying on the morning dog walk.
You might want to get your dogs an anti-wolf collar. Wolves, other dogs, and big cats, go for the throat when they attack, the big spiked leather collars prevent that. Not something you want them to have on all of the time, but they are effective.
Cool link, bro!
Great story, Animal. Even back in those days a Daisy Model 25 couldn’t have been cheap. You and Jon did good.
Keep the Allamakee County stories coming
I think we both bought new Crosman 760s. I went through several of those over the course of my misspent youth.
These days someone would be sure to rat you out to the feds.
And those two boys were named BA Baraccus and Howlin Mad Murdoch. Now you know the rest of the story.
I love it when a plan comes together.
+1 pity the fool
BB gun pop can wars – that takes me back. Thanks for the article!
Excuse the OT/cat butt me, but I am getting absolutely slammed with fucking reCAPTCHAs recently. Fuck ’em. They’re slow as hell.
I don’t get why they try to make me confess to not being a robot.
/Didn’t expect the Electronic Inquisition.
Pick all the images that contain street lights. Oh, you are old and the images are 1″x1″ shots of an entire city block so the street lights look like ant footprints? hahahahaha
Good story, I can envision it well.
Interview seemed to go well. While walking me out of the building the supervisor asked if I had any other offers, that feels like a good sign; but I often misread situations as well.
the supervisor asked if I had any other offers
When I’m not going to offer someone a job, I feel better if I know they have other offers.
Kidding! Yes, that’s a good sign.
ha!
Ouch.
Is that really true or not?
I don’t care if they have other offers or not, whether I’m going to make an offer or not.
I do think its a good sign.
No, I’m asking if you really do say that as a precursor to telling the candidate no.
I’m not in the job market and I doubt I will ever have a job interview again, but that stopped my heart on CPRM’s behalf.
It’s stupid for me to be invested that much, but I am.
That would put me on edge for days.
No, I’m asking if you really do say that as a precursor to telling the candidate no.
No, I don’t. I don’t ask that question at all.
I don’t ask that question, since I’m not in a position to hire anyone, but I have had it asked of me.
It is a good sign. It means they are interested and want to know if anyone else is; it’s a bargaining tactic. If no one else is interested yet they can take their time and give a lower offer, but if they have competition they know they have to move faster and present a better offer. They also want to know if they have a shot, if you’re interviewing at another position that is offering, say, $25 to $30, and thre best they can offer is $22, they may cut they losses.
The best answer to give yes, you are interviewing at other places, but haven’t gotten to any details yet.
I tell people it rarely take much time for an employer to say no.
Saying yes, takes much longer time due to the internal approval process.
My opinion is the that the supervisor is asking how much time he/she has to burn before you become unavailable.
Depends on who’s doing the hiring.
I have to go through a long process before I can tell a canidate ‘no’, and even then, it’s not me doing that. Though I suspect it’s more akin to ghosting than to rejection.
I call every candidate I have had a face-to-face with but don’t hire to let them know our decision, and give them an idea of why.
I don’t even officially get their contact information – but they do tend to leave it on their resumes.
We can NOT say why we did not hire a person. Any official correspondance would say that it went to another candidate.
Oops, tag closing fail.
Its my call on whether to hire or not. The decision is usually made immediately after the final face-to-face interview.
Ain’t nobody told me I can’t call the ones who didn’t make it. HR pretty much has given up on me and my hiring techniques anyway.
Oh, we get to say who to hire – we don’t get to say who to interview.
They called back already and………………………….I have a job again!
Congratulations!
+1
What will you be doing?
Getting paid to hang out here. Duh.
Congrats, CPRM!
He can’t have my job!
Playing Big Brother (surveillance).
Well, it’s something.
Anyway, congrats.
Post the juicy bits here!
Fluffer.
YAYAYAYAYAYAYAYAYAYAY!!!!!
Congrats CPRM! Hope it pays better then the previous job.
More hours and per hour.
Good deal, hope you enjoy it.
Congrats! Does this mean you can afford name brand groceries? That’s my dream . .along with a car built in the same decade that I’m driving it.
Congrats! I’m still lookin’
Yay!
Congratulations!
It was the unzipped fly that sealed it I bet.
Good work, dude!
I’m happy for you!
Huzzah!
Thanks to all for all the support, this is a truly great place.
You da man! Good to hear, CPRM, but I hope it doesn’t cut into any Hat/Hair making time. If it does, you’ll have to tender your resignation from your place of employment.
This will fit in well right here. The Rat King.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kIWss-_5HGM
Speaking of rats, Government Sachs working on its woke street cred. And is typical of adherents to wokism, they exempt themselves from their own standards.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y-7P66W6ix4&feature=emb_logo
My wife is an executive of “Government Sachs”, and I assure you their internal corporate culture is pretty fucking woke.
Although perhaps it benefits her since she is Asian and female. Although being Asian may be worse than white these days.
After the so-called “Great Recession”, the government basically cracked down on all “investment banks” (which Goldman is not actually classified as any more thanks to that event). Now everything they do is for the immediate approval of the government to keep them satisfied and at bay.
One group she was on spent a billion dollars over a couple of years forgiving people’s underwater home loans that Goldman had purchased. To make the U.S. government happy and so it looks good and compassionate. Naturally, the first thing everyone asks is “Shit. How do I get my loan just spontaneously forgiven by my creditor?”. Well, the best way was to get a loan way above your means and to never ever pay anything at all. Those are your best odds.
Would?
Well, she’s my wife. So yeah. 3 children.
She’s not a libertarian though. She’s an establishment Republican.
Working on it.
At GS? Wow, that really is diverse.
Most people I worked with when I was on the street were Team Blue and GS even more so.
I’ve had dinner with many of these big wigs, and I strongly don’t get that impression at all the way they talk about the government. But that doesn’t mean they’re Republican either I guess. Old team loyalties don’t change much.
Very much the old school of Top Men.
No, no, no. Banks are practically unregulated. It’s like the wild west out there. Everybody knows that.
Your wife is female? Doesn’t sound very woke.
lol
To make the U.S. government happy and so it looks good and compassionate.
And trigger a taxable event for the IRS?
I believe I figured out the problem with the rifle last night. The buffer spring had some kind of black plastic plug in the end of it. When I removed it, it now feeds/ejects when cycled manually. Next time I’m off work and it’s daylight I’ll see if it functions properly.
Hah!
Great story Animal!
By the way, I finished your book. I’ll save my review for Friday.
You’re going to bury it in the Friday news dump?
Friday is “What are we reading?”
“Murder Flies the Coop” might be done by then.
Great Story Animal,
My friend worked at a horse farm and the barn was a wash with rats. We used to throw a gofer bomb or smoke bombs down their holes in the hill next to the barn and shoot them with 20 ga. bird shot. No payment for us just good old fun.
BRAVO!
Speaking of rats.
“I am pleased that the senators are reconsidering,” Schiff told reporters. “This witness obviously has such relevant information to shed on the most egregious of all of the charges in the articles of impeachment, and that is that the President of the United States withheld hundreds of millions of dollars in military aid from an ally at war to help secure that nation’s help to cheat in the next election.”
Schiff added:
“The news of the last 24 hours that John Bolton not only is prepared to testify but that based on his manuscript, that testimony would include a direct conversation with the President of the United States where the President made it clear that he was conditioning military aid on political investigations or material that he wanted from Ukraine, makes it all the more clear why you can’t have a trial, a meaningful trial, without witnesses and you certainly can’t have one without John Bolton.”
Bolton is so mad that Trump doesn’t want to invade Iran that he is making shit up about the Ukraine nothingburger.
Supposing what he said was true, though. Does it matter?
No. Diplomacy 101.
One of life’s golden moments is to do the right thing and know the end result will fuck over one of your opponents.
Not from my perspective.
The entirety of Trump’s presidency has been about criminalizing the normal parts of diplomacy and ignoring the rampant ongoing corruption.
All we know at this point about Bolton’s book is, as far as I know, (multiple) hearsay from anonymous leakers.
Now we have notorious liar Schiff claiming Repubs are rethinking their opposition to new witnesses? I’ll wait for someone who isn’t a notorious liar desperately trying to salvage a massive failure to weigh in. Could well be true; there are definitely NeverTrump Senators, but I am surprised the Dems even want to open the Pandora’s Box of new witnesses. They have a whole lot more to lose than the Repubs on that front.
I think we all pretty much know everything about Bolton’s book. Or do you think he went straight to the NYT because it’s going to be “orange man ain’t so bad and we shouldn’t be involved in so many foreign military skirmishes”?
Bolton is an absolute true believer in American military adventurism.
Therefore I take everything he says and does in light of that. If it serves his long term goals to ingratiate himself with the Democrats, that is exactly what he will do.
Any attempt to drain the swamp will send the swamp rats scurrying.
They’re confident that the cuck R’s who would cave on witnesses in the first place wouldn’t be for the Bidens.
Repubs who would only vote for additional prosecution witnesses, but not a single defense witness, would be very unlikely to retain any committee assignments worth a damn, or to survive their next election. I understand Murkowski’s on the bubble already, I can’t imagine Willard’s Hamlet impersonation is playing well. Snow, I have no idea.
There wouldn’t even be fig leaf for them to hide their diseased nethers behind; it would be a total sellout and no way to candy-coat it.
Plus, there’s many procedural tricks to manage any votes on witnesses. The most obvious is to pair them up, one prosecution and one defense witness per motion. You know, for fairness. Each caucus rank orders their witnesses, and they are voted on in pairs of descending importance. Oh, you want Bolton? OK, here’s a motion for Bolton and Hunter Biden.
Probably can’t get Joe without POTUS. and what would Hunter know? he’ll just deny everything wasn’t on the up and up. FBI, State, and DOJ need to investigate under Foreign Corrupt Practices Act but they haven’t.
my vote is for Schiff and Ciaramella and any pass-through staffer formerly associated with the NSC.
what would Hunter know
Enough to plead the Fifth to every question, most likely.
This is about optics, not evidence-gathering, and always has been.
Probably can’t get Joe without POTUS
Maybe not, but the arguments on why Joe should testify would be interesting. Still, probably best to leave him off the list. The circumstantial evidence that there was enough to justify inquiries about his corruption would be plenty.
Honestly, I think escalating past the Dem’s pain point should be the strategy here. McConnell runs the process, and he has shown he is easily capable of setting up a process here that (a) would be superficially fair and (b) the Dems won’t want to go forward.
Hell, he could say he wants a single up or down vote on each side’s list of witnesses, preceded by arguments on why they should be called. That alone would be catastrophic. Days of Trump’s lawyers listing Deep Staters they want to call and why, including Schiff (due to questions about his contacts with Ciamerella). The Dems have already shot their wad, so this would be pure pickup for the Repubs.
I think Dems should call the disgruntled ghost of Hitler next.
Let’s hear testimony. From everyone. I have no problem with Bolton or anyone else from the Democrats’ witness wish list being called to give their testimony. But, pair that with giving the defense their own right to call whoever they want to the stand. I don’t mind if Trump gets skewered by Bolton and McMaster and whoever. But, let Trump bring Joe and Hunter Biden, Eric Ciaramella, hell, maybe even Adam Schiff on the stand.
The Democrats don’t want testimony. They want selective testimony.
I always like escalating beyond what your adversary is willing to tolerate.
Make the motion on witnesses a blanket motion: each side can call whatever witnesses they want, with the sole exception (perhaps) of the President himself. No games, much more like an actual trial. I have to wonder if the Dems would blink.
Schiff would have a hard time testifying without perjuring himself. Hunter Biden might take the fifth to every question.
I suspect Hunter wouldn’t be the only one taking the Fifth.
Imagine all the FBI and DOJ apparatchiks involved in the FISA fraud taking the stand and the rote recitals of “On advice of counsel blah blah” from these paragons of law enforcement virtue.
nah. end it quickly.
OFFS!
It’s time.
Execute War Plan Red.
Wing attack plan R!
Graham today:
But speaking on Monday, Graham also made clear that he does not plan to drop the GOP’s efforts to bring in witnesses like the Bidens in Trump’s trial. Democrats have strongly rejected the idea.
“But I promise you this, if we add to the record, we’re going to call Hunter Biden, Joe Biden, all these other people,” Graham said.
Let the escalation begin.
I want this over, and would be happy to see the Dems do the smart thing and throw in the towel. But if they aren’t willing, then let’s have a full airing of this entire affair. Since the Dems have made this about whether Trump had any legitimate grounds for investigating the Bidens, I think they would be in the cross-hairs*.
*Note: “cross-hairs” is used solely in a metaphorical sense, and not in any way intended to imply that any sort of weapons targeting device should be directed at them.
I’d also suggest calling Barack Obama. What did the President know about the plan to spy on Trump, and when did he know it?
Never played with guns growing up. I picked up the mostly useless hobby of golf at an early age.
It wasn’t play, we were serious about the varmints and the good critters to eat.
There were very few deer in this area when I was a lot younger. Larger families, what some people called poaching others called feeding those families. We didn’t hunt deer out of season, not necessarily because we were too law abiding but too busy working and hours spent fruitlessly hunting would have been wasted. We hunted legally but often struck out.
For whatever reason now there are a lot of deer, not a surplus but enough. I’ve not scored maybe 3 times in the last 30 years and often more than one since we party hunt. Hunt out of tradition, my dad and brothers are in the stand with me, even though they’re not any more.
It wasn’t play. . .
I could have chosen better words.
Did I understand you a while back that you have a lot of apple trees? What do you do with all the apples? I’m getting ready to order some, zone 3s, those I planted last year 2 of 3 died, I over fertilized, I’m sure. Seemed like a good idea at the time.
Thanks
There were very few deer in this area when I was a lot younger.
Something I have heard in both Wisconsin and North Texas. Not sure exactly what led to the massive resurgence in deer population in either place. Land use in either is pretty much unchanged, for the most part, over the last 50 years. Maybe there was enough hunting to keep the numbers down to almost nothing, but it seems unlikely to me, having participated in Wisconsin’s completely fruitless effort to reduce deer population in the southern part of the state,
More active farmland, perhaps?
More farmland = more deer chow, for the most part. They eat corn, wheat, alfalfa, soybeans. Deer hunters love them some farmland for that reason. Now, at some point the deer need more cover.
But I think a lot of farmland has actually been retired over the last decades. Maybe that’s what has supported their population increase – we have optimized the chow-to-cover ratio?
Subdivisions do like to have woods.
And really don’t like .30-06 rounds flying by.
all Golf is good for the soul……
::presses intercom button:: Mr. Animal, I have Michael Bay on the phone for you.
EXPLODING RATS!!!!
Mrs Frisby and the Rats of NIMH reboot?
Nickel Metal Hydride battery powered rats?
The electrifying new movie!
With frickin’*air quotes* lasers attached to their heads?
Rat Things.
Sequel to Willard and Ben to round out trilogy. [Disclaimer: I’ve never seen either film.]
Willard is quite good; Ben is hilariously awful thanks to the terrible child actor who befriends the rat.
You probably know Michael Jackson sang the title song; in the movie, the bratty kid comes up with the lyrics performing them in his best (or worst) Rex Harrison-style Sprechgesang, which is a highlight of how bad the movie is.
Oh, and it’s got Meredith Baxter long before she came out as a lesbian.
I KNEW you would know all about those movies! : )
Nice article, Animal. The sewer rats were much worse living in the city than the ones I’ve found out here in the country. I remember the city sewer rats being the size of small dogs, but the hawks, foxes, owls, skunks seem to grab them out here before they get to big. No squirrels here either.
I’ve gotten several with bbs, but my go to is regular rat traps. They learn quick and are very cautious, so the key is train the rats to eat off them. I bait them daily for several days with peanut butter and bred before setting the mechanism. Once the rats have grown comfortable, I set the traps and usually get them all at once.
There was one rat I couldn’t get. Avoided my traps, avoided the poison, avoided my bbs. Finally got him by dissolving the poison in water.
Duke Leto Ratreides?
The Water of Death?
I used to bulls-eye womp rats in my T-16 back home.
/mild brag
great story. we had a rat colony in my backyard when i was about 5. dad called some company that rolled up in several pickup trucks loaded with rednecks armed with shovels. they stuck a hose down one hole and waited. then it was on. brutal. one redneck showed me a bucket with water and about half a dozen babies swimming in it. he said, “you have to put a brick on them or else they’ll swim” and then he put a brick on top of them. i assume they dug up the tunnels under the shed. we didn’t have a rat problem after that.
I have a genuine hatred for mice and rats. Mostly mice. In our previous home we had an infestation that took forever to kill off. Over a month of finding dead mice in random spots. When they eat the poison the run for water so usually we found them in the dog bowls.
https://youtu.be/zWVw-j8eYSk
i assumed that many mice would exhaust their food supply. that farm is beyond saving. burn it down. rebuild. keep cats.
That reminds me that I need to check the bait stations and put out some more.
David Hogg
“This is a tweet for for the founders of the gun violence prevention movement started centuries ago by almost entirely black, brown and indigenous lgbtq women and non binary people that never got on the news or in most history books.
We may not know all your names but thank you.”
I have no idea what this lesbian is referencing, but my God this kid is getting dumber by the day
I’m pretty sure LGBQWERTY people weren’t generally accepted until very recently. And non-binary people, aside from some allowed kinks from time to time, would be forcibly restrained as mentally ill. If they were lucky.
“There I was, making shit up again and saying unbelievably stupid things like the notion that there was a gun control movement ‘centuries ago’ when CNN gave me a platform to spout more stupid shit.”
We should always remember the LGBTQ non-binary folks who were pushing for common sense musket control in the the 1700’s. Harvard isn’t educating our best, that’s for sure.
Hahvahd class mind right there. Just hand wave away gun control’s long racist history.
Gotta be another one of his satirical pieces.
And when it wasn’t racist, it was about keeping threats disarmed such as peasants or religious minorities (which is really what racist gun control was as well, it wasn’t just for racist sake) and that disarmament was before guns to boot.
Pay no attention to the crypto-Jim Crow gun control measures still on the books.
Women of Lesbos, I can’t wait to see it!
OK. Is this one of your “fictional” posts? C’mon, that can’t be real.
I mean C’MON!
Reality is a parody. This is real
I just looked.
OMG it’s real.
Weep for America
So, is this an implied or direct “Fuck you” to the people of color who defended themselves with guns, and fought for gun rights for all?
David Hogg may not know their names, but most people have at least heard of Harriet Tubman, and I don’t think Frederick Douglass has been completely unpersoned yet.
And the Black Panthers. Police harassment tends to go down dramatically when the guy you’re harassing has a shot gun slung around his shoulder.
Back in the late ’80s when I lived in Richmond, VA, I stumbled across a radio station that had interviewed black people about their experiences in the bad old Jim Crow/KKK days.
Stories of gun ownership and use were plentiful. Including one story about the KKK kicking open the door of a black church during worship services, and being greeted with a number of the parishioners standing up and pulling their handguns.
The KKK left.
Also, a story of what sounded like a pretty significant night engagement between the KKK and a black community, complete with people firing at the night riders from their living room windows.
These were all first-hand accounts. They were riveting. Richmond was an interesting place – two cities, still, with a thriving middle-class black community that I think was pretty much invisible to the white community. I discovered it almost as a parallel universe because one of the bus routes I took to and from the office went through it. Businesses, etc. that you never heard of as a white boy, lined up down the main street, etc. And it was only about four or five blocks from where I lived.
Great Article as ever Animal, Thanks!
Great bit. I would say that it makes me feel like killing some rats, but you know the NSA would red flag me.
Great writing, great story. Thanks!
Its the Somme, possibly Verdun, only with rats.
Great imagery. I can see the two farmboys with their improvised birdshot minigun standing on that tractor ravaging the oncoming horde of rats clear as day, as smoke from the blackpowder grenade drifts across the charnel field.
Also, proves the truth of this:
Crew-served weapons are indeed the right choice for children.