Man vs Nature, continued

I was on the back porch with my father-in-law the other day. We were sitting on patio furniture, drinking some beers after finishing putting on yet another caliper. Apparently the rebuilt caliper from O'Reilly wasn't worth a damn. Pretty scary since it's defectiveness led to a dramatic loss of brake fluid. Nothing like trying to stop and mashing the pedal all the way to the floor before beginning to slow down. So it was in the sense of righting a wrong and avoiding a major calamity that he drank a Coors Lite and I drank a Miller High Life-Lite.

Kicking back beers, we looked out at the back yard and noticed a squirrel running up the trunk of the large oak tree. I remarked that our dog Bird probably wishes she could climb trees. In the hopes of catching a squirrel, she bolts out of the door in a dead run every time we let her out. My father-in-law(we'll call him 'D') remarked, "I've got something that can climb trees." I didn't quite catch on and said something to the effect that perhaps our old cat could climb up the tree after the squirrel.

At this he got up out of the chair and repeated that he had something that could go up there and get it. He walked over to the utility room and retrieved a .22 caliber rifle. He told me how he had special shells just for squirrels, I think he called them cv's or something. Anyway, he walked to the edge of the driveway and admitted that the neighbors to the right of the house would "freak out" if they saw him. The other neighbors wouldn't care, as Mr. B has reportedly shot a few himself.

While he was retrieving the rifle, the squirrel had jumped to the nearby pecan tree near the garden. D asked me to point out the critter for him, and I did. He approached the tree while holding the rifle down toward the ground with his right hand around the outside of the trigger and his left hand underneath the barrel. Moving into position, D was careful to use the carport to obscure him from the squirrel-loving neighbors' view.

D looked up and spotted the squirrel, then raised the rifle and shot. This happened in one fluid motion, taking about 2 seconds. Apparently the beauty of cv's is that they are very quiet shots. A "pop" not much louder than a BB gun rang out, and the squirrel jumped to another branch and ran frantically down the limb. Just as D declared that he had missed, the squirrel fell out of the tree and hit the ground with a soft thud.

In his thick Mississippi drawl, D. reflected, "Well. I guess I got 'im."

I walked over toward the still-twitching squirrel. It wasn't a head shot, but it was still a pretty damn good shot I thought. I said as much and it dawned on me that my father-in-law had just shot a live animal in the back yard with a rifle. The realization elicited a childish giggle, and maybe that was just because of the beer on an empty stomach.

He explained that he had shot about 15 in the last week since his wife had renewed his gun privileges. "If you walk out to the tree line where I've piled them, you'll definitely smell 'em," he confided. Also, he wanted the episode to remain a secret from my mother-in-law as she has explicitly forbidden firearm discharge in the backyard.

So, by posting this, I've threatened the Father/Son -in-law bond. But I figured the greater good was at stake and that a disservice to humanity would be done by remaining silent.



Cheers.