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Maine has very long winters and it's necessary to find hobbies to get you through the cold. I love to feed the birds in the and I start putting out the feeders in October, to get them used to a steady supply of chow.

I came home one day last week from my mother's house to discover that one of my bird feeders was moving under its own power. Upon investigation, I found that a curious red squirrel had gotten himself into a little fix and was inside the feeder. He was stamping his hind feet, chattering and twitching his tail at me, like I was to blame for his predicament! I was not impressed since I had just that morning filled said feeder with "Meaties" which is caviar for birds, and said feeder was now totally empty.

My husband, Jim will be the first to tell you that I am not a very good marksman. He's taken me out to shoot skeet and to plink cans, but I still can't hit the broad side of a barn from six feet away. I was seeing red as I went inside to get the 22 pistol with the intention of sending the scoundrel home to his mama, crying like a baby. I came back out to see the squirrel sitting up on the feeder now, washing his face. I walked right up to him and he didn't move. He was so close I could see the caviar seed casings under his little fingernails. I jumped at him several times before he finally decided he'd had enough fun for one day and jumped down to the trellis, ran across my weed, I mean, perennial bed and up a tree. He sat perfectly still, posed on a branch, in plain sight in perfect range. I took careful aim and shot. Six times. He never even flinched. By now, all the chipmunks, grey squirrels and blue jays in a half-mile range are watching, bent over in hysterics. I filled the cylinder and aimed the pistol again. Six shots later, the red squirrel came down from the tree and headed for the feeder in the backyard.

I called Jim to tell him that I needed a gun. A real gun. Not a namby-pamby pistol, but a real killin' gun. I explained that a vicious, caviar-eating squirrel was invading us and that the 22 had failed to kill him. He told me to go to the gun cabinet and get the 410. Like I knew what a 410 was. I assumed that the rifles with scopes were out, and finally he helped me narrow it down. He told me where the ammo was and gave me a complete and comprehensive gun safety course over the next thirty seconds over the phone. I was now armed and dangerous.

I took the weapon outside to level the playing field. Already headed back to the caviar feeding station: a red squirrel. One shot was all it took to dispatch him to the big nut house in the sky. Later, a grey squirrel made the mistake of raiding the feeder in the backyard. He was so busy trying to bury sunflower seeds under leaves that he didn't even see it coming. One shot and his sad little life was extinguished.

Since that day, word had gotten around in this rural squirrel-dom. If that crazy woman in polka-dotted pajama pants and morning hair has a short gun in her hand, just stay put. You'll only get hurt if you jump into the bullets way, BUT, if she happens to have that long bang-stick, sayonara, baby!

Learn more about this author, Linda Batey.
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