My wife and I like to feed the birds. There is something nice about watching little chickadees flying back and forth in the middle of winter. So last year we put out a couple of bird feeders and made it through most of the winter enjoying our friends gifted with flight.
One night in late winter/early Spring my wife came out of the bathroom and asked if I had heard that noise. “What noise?” I replied. “The sound of wet sneakers on the side of the house.” Oh, boy. Either she’s drunk, or something isn’t right. Well I knew for certain she was sober so I told her I would go out to the garage, the only way into the back yard, and flip on the light as soon as I opened the door and see what was going on. So I with my trusty baseball bat in hand, and wife at the back window, threw open the door and flicked on the light and there they were. . .
Three raccoons, helping each other climb up the side of the house to get to the bird feeder. One, was actually unsupported, and apparently well capable of scaling a house clad in vinyl siding. All three were frozen, they were staring at me, for what seemed like a small eternity. Suddenly like, kids that just put a baseball through their neighbor’s window, they bolted, and I, just like the crazy neighbor, chased after them bat raised in the air yelling at the top of my lungs. I consider this to be the Boston tea party of our back yard. Only, by my estimation, I should have a slightly higher I.Q. then the average raccoon, or so I thought. . .
I told a coworker, and like the good redneck, ehr friend he is, he offered me one of his guns to solve the problem. Now here’s where it gets tricky. I must do this quietly, because our neighbors feed these little guys. That’s right, the beasts capable of draining an entire bird feeder over night. Problem two, the wife has a no gun policy, and certainly killing theses poor victims of circumstance will not work. So my only option is deterrent. I hook up a motion light that turns on a battery sensor and figure, maybe the light will scare them away. Right. If these guy’s could talk, I would have heard, “thanks, it was a little too dark to see our food.”
The next day after the failed light, I go and buy an airsoft gun. These things are BB guns you can shoot your friends with. That night, I come home, load, it practice shooting and learn it shoots a little up and to the left. Huh, familiar. . . I lay in wait in bed for the light to come on. When it does, I sneak out to the window open it and fire. Pleased with myself that I scared them away, I go to bed until the light comes on again. I get up, lather and repeat. . .
This goes on for several nights, meanwhile my wife and I are getting more tired, from lack of REM sleep. We finally cave in and bring in the feeder and call it a season.
Fast forward to this year. Early summer I had purchased a paintball gun to play with my buddies in Maine. So when we put out the feeder this year I’m ready. I put out the light again, and despite the improper safety issue, leave the marker loaded and charged on the kitchen counter. Well let me tell you these guys have a good memory and a lot of F. U. attitude. The light comes on, I sneak out and get 3 satisfying splats at 6 feet on one of the two raccoons gorging on our feeder. The one I hit took off like a rocket, not to be seen the rest of the night. Now the one I didn’t hit, runs to the edge of the effective range of the airsoft gun, turns, and looks at me as if to say, “What are you going to do now punk?”
“I’ll tell you what I’m going to do. I’m going to take aim at your little face and I’m going to fire down semi automatic balls of fish oil pain on your sorry butt.” As I do, it was a scene from a cartoon. This otherwise crafty little creature jumped up and spun around in one swift movement and ran. So that brings us to today. Where I still have the light set up and I get up and shoot at raccoons. I do so less often now, but they come just the same. All of this, of course, is background for warfare step three. I have, on order, an electric fence charger, capable of 2 Joules of output on a 50 mile fence.
Stay tuned. . .
One night in late winter/early Spring my wife came out of the bathroom and asked if I had heard that noise. “What noise?” I replied. “The sound of wet sneakers on the side of the house.” Oh, boy. Either she’s drunk, or something isn’t right. Well I knew for certain she was sober so I told her I would go out to the garage, the only way into the back yard, and flip on the light as soon as I opened the door and see what was going on. So I with my trusty baseball bat in hand, and wife at the back window, threw open the door and flicked on the light and there they were. . .
Three raccoons, helping each other climb up the side of the house to get to the bird feeder. One, was actually unsupported, and apparently well capable of scaling a house clad in vinyl siding. All three were frozen, they were staring at me, for what seemed like a small eternity. Suddenly like, kids that just put a baseball through their neighbor’s window, they bolted, and I, just like the crazy neighbor, chased after them bat raised in the air yelling at the top of my lungs. I consider this to be the Boston tea party of our back yard. Only, by my estimation, I should have a slightly higher I.Q. then the average raccoon, or so I thought. . .I told a coworker, and like the good redneck, ehr friend he is, he offered me one of his guns to solve the problem. Now here’s where it gets tricky. I must do this quietly, because our neighbors feed these little guys. That’s right, the beasts capable of draining an entire bird feeder over night. Problem two, the wife has a no gun policy, and certainly killing theses poor victims of circumstance will not work. So my only option is deterrent. I hook up a motion light that turns on a battery sensor and figure, maybe the light will scare them away. Right. If these guy’s could talk, I would have heard, “thanks, it was a little too dark to see our food.”
The next day after the failed light, I go and buy an airsoft gun. These things are BB guns you can shoot your friends with. That night, I come home, load, it practice shooting and learn it shoots a little up and to the left. Huh, familiar. . . I lay in wait in bed for the light to come on. When it does, I sneak out to the window open it and fire. Pleased with myself that I scared them away, I go to bed until the light comes on again. I get up, lather and repeat. . .
This goes on for several nights, meanwhile my wife and I are getting more tired, from lack of REM sleep. We finally cave in and bring in the feeder and call it a season.
Fast forward to this year. Early summer I had purchased a paintball gun to play with my buddies in Maine. So when we put out the feeder this year I’m ready. I put out the light again, and despite the improper safety issue, leave the marker loaded and charged on the kitchen counter. Well let me tell you these guys have a good memory and a lot of F. U. attitude. The light comes on, I sneak out and get 3 satisfying splats at 6 feet on one of the two raccoons gorging on our feeder. The one I hit took off like a rocket, not to be seen the rest of the night. Now the one I didn’t hit, runs to the edge of the effective range of the airsoft gun, turns, and looks at me as if to say, “What are you going to do now punk?”
“I’ll tell you what I’m going to do. I’m going to take aim at your little face and I’m going to fire down semi automatic balls of fish oil pain on your sorry butt.” As I do, it was a scene from a cartoon. This otherwise crafty little creature jumped up and spun around in one swift movement and ran. So that brings us to today. Where I still have the light set up and I get up and shoot at raccoons. I do so less often now, but they come just the same. All of this, of course, is background for warfare step three. I have, on order, an electric fence charger, capable of 2 Joules of output on a 50 mile fence.
Stay tuned. . .
Well, here it is. One small step for communication with the world, one giant leap for less free time. A long while back, I had thought about starting a blog mainly for showcasing my creations of the brick. Being a web developer I had grand visions of creating my own blog tool. . . Right. The cobbler’s children are barefoot.