After-Action Report: 28 August 2009

I was cleaning out my garage and opened the door so I could haul out some trash. I worked for a while and then I thought I'd go check on the trees over my car. Loaded with Rattus Volantus. Feeling charitable, I went and got some 3/4" "gravel" from beside the sidewalk and tossed stones to scare away a couple of the birds. Some wouldn't scare. I got a pole saw and poked a big limb, and three more flushed. Then I saw one right over my headlight that wouldn't spook.

Okay, if you're that deep of a sleeper, or that stupid, you're toast. I went and loaded up, found him again, took careful aim, and fired.

Nothing happened.

I was standing there for a half-tick, beginning to wonder if I had somehow missed, when I heard a rustle, a couple of thuds, and the bird came out from the boughs and plop fell about a foot away from the front-driver's side corner of my car. DRT. My ballistics team told me he took the pellet in the breast, through the spine and probably something else important, and the exit wound was on the left side of the neck. I tossed him in the storm drain where the neighborhood cats take refuge from passers-by.

I went back in and kept working for a while and decided to to another sweep. Sure enough, there was one more up there. I propped up my flashlight so it shone directly on the bird's underside and went and loaded up. The shot sounded like a thunderclap, which means it broke some thick feathers; the bird flew off. Good riddance. As I picked up my torch, I noted that it was (directly under the bird) on top of a little pile of poo. Gee, I wonder who put those there . . .