Try Crapping All Over My Car NOW Birdy!

Yes! Great Success.

My car has been throwing a check engine light so tonight I moved it up to the top of the driveway so I could be (mostly) out of the wind and close to my tools in the garage. I had recently un-destroyed the garage enough to park my wife's car inside, so it was backed in, providing a convenient flat surface (the hood) on which to set my tools. At around 22:00 I went to work. Outside temperature: 34 degrees F and falling. I set up a wooden sawhorse and lashed a Sun Gun lamp to it, and pointed the light at the engine bay and got elbows-deep in my car.

I finished up around 23:00 and heard that lovely little coo-ooo of a morning dove (a.k.a. flying rat or common pigeon). I cleaned up my tools and turned my work light up to the old ash tree above the driveway. It was spotted, but too young and dumb to move. I left the light on it and went and grabbed up my trusty scoped Daisy 880 and gave it a match pellet and a full 10 pumps, and said a highly modified version of the sniper's prayer. I went back out and he was still up there. There was no place for a rest and I didn't have time to improvise one, so I took aim offhand. The shot was no good, for there was a twig in the way. I moved a foot or two to the left and it was clear shooting through a 2-3" gap in the sticks & twigs of the tree. Steady. Exhale. Still too shaky, wait. Steady. Exhale. The wind is coming up the street, you can hear it in the leaves' rattling. Now or never. Squeeze...

It dropped like a stone out of the tree.

I walked quickly around the car to see if it was still alive, and to mark the place where it fell. The bird was sitting on the concrete like it had decided to roost there for the night. I went quickly back to the box of pellets on the hood of my wife's car and reloaded. Another full 10 pumps, to be sure not to have to do this twice. By the time I got back down the drive, the pigeon was lying with its head down. I poked it with the muzzle of my pellet rifle. No response. Well, the rifle is ready to go, and there is no need of an animal suffering needlessly anyway. Point-blank to the head for good measure.

I wrapped him up in a plastic bag from the grocery store and left it on the hood of my car. It's the same thing, tonight anyway, as putting it in the freezer. Except that my wife wouldn't ban me from hunting pigeon if I forgot it on my car. Tomorrow it will be a present for one of the other guys at work who is not too proud to eat at the roadkill cafe.

That makes two pigeons so far.

The first was bagged this past Thanksgiving day before we went to visit my family. I was (again) doing something in the garage, with #2 keeping me company, and I heard the cooing of a flying rat. I rushed in and got my rifle, loaded up and bade #2 follow me in silence as I stalked across the front yard until a hole opened up in the tree, maybe 3-4" across. One shot and down he went, flopping around in the front yard. I rushed back to get another pellet and was in the process of reloading when I heard the voice of #2 say "Daddy, Wally got the pigeon." I went back out and sure enough, Wally the black & white neighborhood cat had snagged my bird! I shot the pellet into the earth and blew a crater in the dirt, much to the amazement of #2. Wally was busily enjoying his Thanksgiving feast next to the next door neighbor's driveway as we went inside. Tear jerker: they put Wally down the next day because he was old and sick with the cancer. They thought he had caught the pigeon himself and were glad he got a last Thanksgiving feast. Their christmas reindeer lighted sculptures won't be going up this year because Wally was a fixture under the reindeer, and it made N.S., their youngest daughter, cry to think of the deer without Wally under them.