My son and I flushed him out this morning. The beast was cunning. Already he'd taken a half-cup of blueberries from our small harvest of bushes behind the garage. Blueberries for pancakes. Our blueberries. Blueberries filled with anti-oxidants. Blueberries to feed my family. This animal was a threat. He needed to be stopped. Was he feeling lucky today?
He was no easy target, hiding in roof rafters, behind walls, leaving piles of germ infested acorn shells in the basement. Who knows what else. I said, "Quick son! Head 'em off at the garage trail!" "You betchya Dad!"
"Rattle the walls," I said.
With pellet gun in hand, I scanned the roofline. Would the creature fall into our trap? "Rattle-rattle-rattle," the boy banged the side of the garage wall with his plastic rake sending the scurrying animal over the roof to my side where I waited in ambush from my back deck perch. Maybe I should have put on my Mossy Oak camo jumpsuit. Nah. "Here he comes boy! I see him!" I said.
Like Clint Eastwood in Pale Rider, I slowly raised the barrel. Looking down the scope, knowing the calibration meant just a couple millimeters below the crosshairs, I took aim at this vermin. For too long he'd plagued these roofs. Justice was coming to town. A tumbleweed rolled across the lawn. One desperate citizen, derby hatted, dashed across the street to hide in a stable barn. Did I set the scope right? I don't know. It didn't matter now. It was just me, the prey and my pellet gun. This was the moment of truth. "Poooosh!" (The sound of a pellet gun)
"Did you get him, Dad?"
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