You'll shoot your brain out

So my mom back in Chicago (south suburbs actually) has all these bird feeders and birdhouses. She's absolutely obsessed with this really. I can't tell you how many times she was like "BILLY... BILLY... look there is the most wonderful finch in the backyard!" To which I would respond "A finch... yeah... wonderful." Sometimes it is kind of cool. She now has a little pond back there with frogs and koi, and she's had to place a netting over it cause she was getting cranes in the back yard eating the fish, and hawks spying the frogs. But what bugs her the most is the tree rats... or as they're known in these parts squirrels.

So she got a BB gun to protect eggs inside the bird houses from the squirrels. The BB gun isn't powerful enough to do much damage but the squirrels do get the point. A few years back I was home for a little bit and there was a squirrel climbing one of the trees. Now I haven't fired a gun often... I fired a .22 rifle back when I was a cub scout, and I had a BB hand gun I used to fire at my text books in college (god I hated spanish) so I thought there would be no way I could hit the thing with my lack of skill. Well I cocked the gun a bunch of times and took aim... fired. The squirrel jerked, hung for a second, then fell from the tree already stiffening. I was experienced some revulsion. Then I went out into the yard to see what had happened. I hit the squirrel in the eye and the BB clearly exited out the back of the skull cause some of the brain was dripping out the back. Needless to say I was overcome with even more revulsion.

I wanted to remove the evidence... I was embarrassed that I'd killed the little rodent and quite shocked that I had even hit it. So I figured I would throw the bugger over the fence into the ditch on the east side of the house. I picked the sucker up by the tail and gave it a swing meaning to give it a good toss. Well that's when I found out that a Squirrels tail is not held on by much. The squirrel's tail came off in my hand (yuck) the squirrel went flying with no arc what soever and smashed into the fence and head first into some rocks my mom was using to make a path in the back yard. The head split into a gory mess of skull, blood and brains. I ended up getting a shovel and tossing the bugger and his tail as far into the ditch as I could (and I sware I heard another crack when the squirrel's body hit a tree). So remember kids on this holiday when the idea of getting a BB gun is in the air... Don't use it unless you are prepared to do deal with the messy consequences.