In march of 2008, I purchased a year-old, bare root Manchurian apricot from Burgess Seed and Plant Company. I placed it in the ground a few days after it arrived, and babied it through droughts, storms, late frosts, insect attacks and all the other nuisances the would-be grower of trees faces in this part of the country.
When I received it, it was little more than a twig with roots. Bro Aaron (who can vouch for me) paid us a visit the very week I planted it, and probably returned to Ft. Benning doubting my sanity. Admittedly, my sanity is questionable. The tree's health, however was not. Like my late dog, Sweetie, it was a tough little shit, and, given sufficient "TLC," made a miracle comeback under less-than-ideal circumstances.
Until today.
Familial duty required that Mags and I light out for Columbia, South Carolina on Saturday. We dragged our asses back to Georgia on Sunday afternoon, had a gander at our garden/orchard, and retired contented and at peace with the world.
This morning, we arose at as decent an hour as any man or woman can on his/her day off and spent the day attending to the various and sundry tasks that render our "bohemian" lifestyle so "liberating" in "Weird Harold" Obama's Amerika. For the first time in ages I listened to talk radio, and actually found myself saluting Kim Jong Il. To be sure, he's a nutcase, but he's a ballsy nutcase, and no more "evil" than any of the baw'bags we've subsidized or otherwise aided for the last seven decades.
Granted, he's a maniac and a commie butcher. But so was "Uncle Joe," so who am I to pass judgment on Kim sonsaeng nim? If Roosevelt was one of the greatest Americans ever to tread this whirling ball of rock on his tottering, poliomyelitis-stricken legs -- a man who "fought evil in his time" whilst forking out billions to the most vicious, homicidal regime in human history (that would be the Soviet Union, for all you Levin and Hannity fans); then KIm Jong Il is simply a 21st century Roosevelt -- with markedly fewer imperialistic ambitions.
I have no idea of the political leanings of the squirrel/rabbit that gnawed my beloved apricot tree in half. Perhaps he was a commie. Perhaps he was a Nazi. Perhaps he was an Islamofascist Libertarian. Perhaps he was part of the Gay Rodent Liberation Front. And I don't care.
At 16:00 (the time at which I turn the radio off), I hied me to the "back forty" and found my beloved apricot sapling gnawed in half. I knew not whether rabbits or squirrels had committed this blatant act of war, so I grabbed my Chink pellet gun and took out my wrath upon representatives of both species.
The first squirrel I met was cheeky -- an absolute smartass. I was highly pissed-off (and shooting offhand), ergo, he did a backflip or two, convulsed a bit, then ran up a tree -- thereby depriving me of meat and hide. I hope the neighbors' cat is eating his mortally wounded ass alive at the moment, for the record. The first rabbit I met was an idiot, by way of comparison. I was rusty and out of practice, so Mags recommended flanking him rather than executing a frontal assault or trying for a "sniper miracle." Doing as she advised, I crossed the property line, circled the long-eared rat, and took a shot from perhaps twenty yards.
I missed.
Beer is fun, but not necessarily good.
Stupidity, however, is good. Especially when manifests itself within the target. I went prone, crawled up to the ridge on which Maggie, Aaron and I had planted gooseberries and sand cherries, and aimed carefully, just as my father and other, equally skilled marksmen had taught me years before.
And I nailed ol' Peter Cottontail. Rather than fucking off, he opted for immobility -- and he paid for it by snifing the northern breeze and going broadside.
The first shot flipped him. My Chink pellet gun isn't the most accurate weapon on earth, but it's plenty powerful. I hit the little fucker just behind the shoulder, as I would a deer. No flipping, no convulsing, no running. He simply keeled over and kicked for a minute or so. By this time, my anger had left me, so I jacked another one up the spout and put it through his heart from three feet away. That stilled him.
I offered the carcass to a neighbor (who refused it), thought of making hasenpfeffer, and then consulted my Ma. She recommended leaving it as a warning to others of its kind. I concurred, and have since been watching kung fu movies with my wife (and composing this post.)
I miss my apricot sapling. It was only a dumb, insesate plant, but I loved it as a democrat loves people he never intends to meet, or as a republican loves his investments in enemy nations.
Yes, this is a "So what?" post. We all lose plants (and other things we love) to vermin. It's a fact of life.
I am, however, disturbed by the fact that I actually enjoyed killing the squirrel, and felt nothing when I greased the long-eared rat.
You're absolutely right, my Bros. It really is too easy.
Alba gu Brath
Hey! You live! Even if you never, ever, check your email...
Sorry to hear about the apricot. They are prone to that sort of thing, though...fruit-bearing trees are just high-risk propositions, when you get down to it.
love-
Posted by: Aaron | May 30, 2009 at 03:58 AM
Is this a, um, scene where we need to queue up the Kenny Loggins theme song for Caddyshack, complete with the visage of no less than Bill Murray loading a 30.06 to rid the fine grounds of a golfer?
Squirrels do the same damage in my own yard, and moles are the little demons coated in fur that are the bane of turf nationwide.
But I have White Fang now.. (actually my son named her Butterfinger).
Be not fooled. Canis Familiaris is but a sub let of Canis Lupus, and unlike the anklebiters bred by the Victorian Age, this queen of shearing teeth is a real killer.
After all that bait, traps, tunneling, digging, and cursing, leave it to the Call Of The Wild to nab that mole's furry destructive arse right out of the ground.
*sniff* BAM.
D.O.A.
Then of course she ambles over to lick and sniff everyone's hands....
Posted by: Wakefield Tolbert | June 01, 2009 at 10:25 PM
30.06 to rid the fine grounds of a golfer?
......
Bloody hell.
Make that, GOFER, not GOLFER.
Though I guess that might be as well sometimes....
Posted by: Wakefield Tolbert | June 01, 2009 at 10:26 PM
Howdy, Bro Aaron!
Yeah, like E.R.B's "John Carter," I still live -- even if the apricot's future is less certain, and its current well-being in doubt.
Bought two more, sprayed everything in the yard with radioactive oleoresin capsaicin, and have been shooting everything with a malocclusion and a Yankee accent (I refuse to believe that rodents are native to the South) that crosses the property line.
In other news: I need to post some photos, Bubba. You should see the dwarf cherry trees you helped me plant when you came up from Columbus. Granted, they looked for all the world like twigs with roots when we put 'em in, but now they're waist-high -- and still growing.
I miss you, Bro. I hope you're doing well, and I hope you'll eventually make your permanent home amongst more hospitable mountains.
Love,
Dave
Posted by: Dave | June 03, 2009 at 11:32 PM
Howdy, Wake!
Loggins? Thou servest me but poorly, sirrah!
Just kidding, Bro.
In all seriousness, though: my war against long-eared and bushy-tailed rats has finally escalated to a Rooseveltian/Johnson-esque scale. Unlike either, though, I need neither allow a latter-day Pearl Harbor, nor fake a Gulf of Tonkin incident. As I'm neither a pacifist nor a democrat (read: "passive-aggressive sadist"),I'm quite content to turn lemons into lemonade -- or rodents into Brunswick stew -- all by my lonesome.
So epic a struggle -- as you must understand -- requires all manner of propaganda. Especially *musical* propaganda.
Loggins?
Pfft! The silly bastard probably hasn't fired a shot in anger since he was twelve.
Murray?
He's a fucking CANADIAN, for Christ's sake.
No, Wake; a crusade of this magnitude simply demands a soundtrack of a higher order.
I recommend Beethoven, Wagner, Alice Cooper and Motorhead.
Posted by: Dave | June 04, 2009 at 12:04 AM
Miss you too.
About those cherry trees-how long you figure till they start flowering-that is, flowering worth notice?
And yeah, put up some photos, I want to see how the garden is coming this year. love
Posted by: Aaron | June 04, 2009 at 04:41 AM
Aye--the image I was trying to intimate is marred by things Canadian and things American; both of which no longer (or never did in the case of Loggins) qualify to the highest score at the front of the class for "I'm a lumberjack and.....I'm STILL a lumberjack."
Nevertheless, you'll forgive the fact that said imagery inculcation was of the beleguered yard master busying himself pulling back the bolt on some large caliber rifle in what must be the final pique of angst before the storm hits.
But yes, I should have sought a thusly similar caliber quality song rather than something that is about as pale as a paper-mache Star Trek planet to beam down two and weakly have two or three red-shirted guys getting zapped by jelly creatures.
Mea Culpa.
Alice does nicely.
John William's Duel of the Fates might be handy (Lord Maul's ditty as he sears flesh and slices bone with a red light saber), or Nazareth?
("Now yer messin' with, a SON OF A BITCH!")
And I agree that lemons are best for lemonade, mammals with hair are best served warmer than room temperature and maybe in a perlow, but LIMES, ah, LIMES are best for good stiff drinks.
Take care.
Happy Gardening.
PS--Wagner is great too, but marred for ME by Looney Toons rendition, wherein a somger hunter finds himself not in exultation over the carcass but sings paeans to the dead rabbit.
Love.
--W
Posted by: Lord Wakefield | June 06, 2009 at 10:51 AM
LOL! Jesus, Wake! That brings back some memories!
"Kill da wabbit, kill da wabbit, kill da wabbit..." :-)
Posted by: Dave | June 12, 2009 at 11:45 AM
Great to see a new post. I keep checking every few weeks.
Hear 'ya on the long eared rodents. I've got a nest about 70 feet from my garden. The little bastards ate ALL my spinach this year.
My daughter thinks the baby rabbits are cute, so any rodent murder will have to be done on the QT.
Hal
Posted by: Hal | June 16, 2009 at 08:29 AM
Did you make sure you held the grip or stock(whatever the case may be) parallel to the ground??? You knows datis da way you bees 'posed to shoot, ain't it? It's a little difficult with a Mosin-Nagant, but I'm working on it. We seem to be having a shortage of both wabbit and 'tree mice' here in the 'Heart of Dixie', so if'n they start to get out of hand, I can bring Gen. Beauregard over, and he'll be more than happy to help with varmint control.
Posted by: J.R. | June 17, 2009 at 01:21 PM
Glad to see a new post, Bro. Now I have a reason to fire up the ol' 'pooter. Y'all be good over there, and tell Mags and Ma Bean the we miss you'ns, and hope to see y'all soon.
Love,
J.R. and Kelly
Posted by: J.R. | June 17, 2009 at 01:25 PM
Hi Dave
How do I contact you? I want to learn more about your Aunt Barbara Talbot Smith's research of Alexander and Robert Trouland
Ken Trolland
Posted by: Ken Trolland | August 07, 2009 at 12:07 AM
cool weblog, I like it.
Bert Bruijnen
Posted by: Bert Bruijnen | August 11, 2009 at 06:53 PM
Update 08/12/2009.
Situation Room: Litter beyond control. The wife and I had just finished a few weeks back putting in some REALLY nice and not so cheap mulch around some flower beds. Later, we kept finding the sheaths and pieces of pine cones chewed like so much confetti crapping everything up.
Source: A squirrel.
I don't like pine trees. I don't like pine CONES. I really don't like squirrels; and they are NOT the cuddly guys Veruca Salt wanted to have as a pet in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.
But you can imagine my angst at seeing--finally--the "evildoer" in this mystery. A squirrel sitting in a pinetree munching on pinecones much as a redneck cornhusker chews on corn cobs--quite methodically, noisily, and without regard to table manners.
My wife and her friend held me by the arm. Why?
To have me NOT go to Wally World to pick up a reasonably priced 10 gauge shotgun. Yeah, I know, that would take the wheel off an 18-wheeler and is more than adequate for home defense needs. Overkill. Melodrama? Nothing left but a spray of fur and microbial DNA. OK.
I dig, I said. OK! Let the little bugger have his fun.
But on this day, the Great White Hunter felt no burdens of peace or Cosmic Green Justice for Animalia.
Posted by: Wakefield Tolbert | August 13, 2009 at 01:26 AM
Ya know, Wake, a shotgun isn't even necessary. I've popped my share of the little bastards (and crows and rabbits as well -- although crows are tougher to hit, by far) with my ChiCom air rifle. Anything with a muzzle velocity over 700 fps is enough for most garden varmints.
Posted by: Dave | October 01, 2009 at 07:54 PM
Ken, you can reach me at my wife's email address: maggietwest@aim.com. It'll be interesting to correspond with someone from the Trouland bloodline. Before she died, Aunt Barb mentioned that getting info on them was like pulling teeth. I'd really be interested in seeing what you've managed to dig up.
Posted by: Dave | October 01, 2009 at 07:59 PM
Thanks, Bert! Glad you like the site. I hope to be polluting the blogosphere on a daily basis as soon as I wrap up a few loose ends. You going to next year's BBQ?
Posted by: Dave | October 01, 2009 at 08:05 PM