Gr'annie git yer gun...

 The bully, the grackle.  He looks like a bully, and he is!

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I am a bird lover.  I appreciate each individual bird for its own sake and I like each one in its especial environment, but what I do not like are bullies at the bird feeders.  Day after day, I fill my feeders and as soon as the lovely goldfinches and evening grosbeaks show up and start nibbling, the obnoxious grackles and blackbirds swoop down and dominate the feeding stations, chasing the little ones away. Today I had had it Up To Here with the bullies and I aimed to do something about it.

I marched myself out to the garage and found the old pump-style BB gun that the kids used to shoot.  For years my sharp-shooting sons and daughter were the ones who were perched out of the office window taking aim at the backyard bullies for me, but nowadays I've got no dead-eye punks to do any shooting for me so I had to take matters into my own hands.  I fiddled with the gun quite a while until NumberOneSon drove up and showed me what I was doing wrong -- not pushing the BB up into the chamber.  Now this granny was armed and dangerous!

 

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I sat in the backyard reading my current book, Killing Lincoln, drinking chai tea, and keeping a sharp eye on the Willow Tree where the culprits were most likely to land and be within BB gun range.  My first bully flew in and hopped down close enough.  Pop!  I was one for one.  I left the bird on the ground as fair warning to the next passers by.  I sat cross legged, gun over my knees and read for quite some time and noticed that several grackles and blackbirds flew overhead, but chose not to come down and bully.  I think I looked quite intimidating to them!  In the meantime, the nuthatches and evening grosbeaks happily flitted here and there, nabbing a seed at their leisure seemingly enjoying themselves.  I felt as if I was defending the defenseless, championing the little guy, helping the helpless.  

Since my backyard job, I've taken to window sniping.  I removed the screen from the office window once again and have my BB gun lying on the desk at the ready.  It seems the backyard is a quieter, kinder place since I've taken up arms.  Well now, I hear that familiar squawk and I see there's a grackle perched on the feeder.  Time to cock the rifle!