harmonicminer

I know, it’s a caricature.

I admit, this guy does look like some of my neighbors.  I live in a rural area, on a dirt road.

But like Mister Yosemite Sam, I hate wabbits.  (I even have a red moustache…  well, it used to be red, anyway.)  These zig-zagging miscreants are not fuzzy, cute little ear-twitching tail wigglers.  They are eaters of drip-line, despoilers of foliage, freelance socialists who think they have a right to my fruit trees’ drip system, inflaters of my water bill.

I have tried everything.  I have been nice.  I have put out bowls of water for them that are refilled every time my drip system runs to water my trees.  In front and in back, so the poor little darlings don’t have to wear themselves out hopping around my lot.  It doesn’t matter.  They still chew up my polyprop drip line, so that I have geysers when the water timer comes on.

Some smart guy at the local vet supply said that if I put out fox urine crystals, it would make the rabbits stay away.  So I spent more money than I should have, buying the distilled essence of bad smells to scare off the bunnies.  (Aren’t you glad you don’t work in the factory that makes that stuff?  And why don’t we hear of PETA demonstrating in front of the fox urine factory to improve the living conditions of the caged foxes….?   …..who presumably are given lots of water.)  Anyway, when I sprinkled the crystals in the prescribed manner and density, the flop eared vandals just laughed (ever seen a rabbit horse laugh?) and chowed down on my drip line.  Again.  For dessert, they ate the bark off one of my trees, to a nice uniform height of 24.376 inches.  (Not bad for an 18 inch wabbit.  Maybe they can levitate.  Maybe they stand on each other’s backs.)

I hate them.  Really.   With the pure kind of hatred that would find pleasure in shooting them all, one by one.  I am really, really tired of having a part-time job fixing my drip line.  Is it so wrong of me to want to have a few trees that don’t grow at 4500 feet above the desert floor without a little extra water?  I’m trying to make the world greener.  I’m pretty sure I feel the same way about these wabbits that Adam felt about thorns after being ejected from Eden.

This morning I came out to leave for school, and I had another geyser….  which means I was spending my hard-earned money watering the local juniper bushes, which don’t need water, because some bushy tailed, fuzzy faced blackguard developed a yen for synthetic drip line….  again.  If you’re an eco-pagan vegan PETA type who feels sorry for the poor little bunnies, keep in mind that they are wasting water.  Mother Gaia did not intend for them to eat poly-prop dripline, or to have water they couldn’t suck out of desert plants.  It’s practically my social responsibility to take firm action.

It has gotten so that when a wabbit runs out in front of my car on the local roads, I swerve to try to hit it.  I almost got one that way yesterday.  The kids laugh maniacally.  They have absorbed the paternal hatred for wabbits.  In fact, my 12 yr old daughter asked me for a rabbit’s foot that last time I shot one with a pellet gun.  I laughed evilly and hurled the carcass over the fence to be eaten by the coyotes who come by every night hoping for a free dinner.  In my family, we recycle.  Nothing wasted.  Not that there will ever be a shortage of wabbits.  As if.

But the week is young, and I have a quota to meet.  Hey, at least with me they have a sporting chance.  I’ve had neighbors who used repeating shotguns.

I borrowed an air rifle from my church choir director.  (I have noticed that choir directors are often armed.  Haven’t you ever wondered what they’re hiding under those choir robes?)  The air rifle is WAY cooler than my old Daisy single-pump pneumatic target pistol, which is only accurate out to about 40 feet.  I’ve been practicing with it.  And I’ve been watching “Lock and load” on cable TV for tips on how to shoot varmints.  I have new cammies, and I’m learning how to talk like Lee Ermey.

This guy is my role model.  I wish I could take him with me to faculty senate meetings.

Anyway, in my tan/brown cammies I blend in with the desert, and, like the US Marine Corps, I own the night.  I think my motto has become, “every musician a rifleman.”  This single shot break-action air pellet rifle even has a laser sight.  Imagine being a jack-rabbit the size of a donkey with a red dot just below your left ear.  Ah, the stuff of poetry.  Think of it as another episode of that military channel classic, “Modern Sniper.”

It better work.  If it doesn’t, I’ll be shopping for a grenade launcher at the next gun show.  I saw something being demonstrated on the military channel that looks like it might fill the bill.  It is sort of a gattling gun for 40mm grenades.  You can get all kinds of specialized ammo for it.  I may have seen one of these in my neighbor’s quonset hut/storage shed.  I think he knows somebody at the local National Guard Armory.

I’ll take the anti-varmint round, please.  About 1000 of them.  Just so I can get in a little practice before I start stalking Bugs.  Forget sporting chances.  This is war.

Doesn’t the Second Amendment say something about the wight to vapowize wabbits?

If it doesn’t, it should have.

UPDATE:  Alas, Anthony (see comments below) is correct.  I got my cartoon gunslingers mixed up.  Indeed, it is Elmer Fudd, not Yosemite Sam, who wishes to schedule the premature demise of flop-eared rodents everywhere.  Oy, what can I say?  Maybe I just wish I looked more like Yosemite Sam, and less like Elmer Fudd.