“The fascination of shooting as a sport depends almost on whether you are at the right or wrong end of the gun.” - P.G. Wodenhouse

My nearest and dearest neighbor has walked this land for better than nine decades. Exactly how many years beyond nine decades is a little fuzzy. It shouldn’t be a questionable figure, so let’s just say it’s nine decades, plus a few odd years.

This sort of accounting is significantly important after a nine decade run. Four more, or two more years, are seriously important. I’ll settle on four. It’s probably closer to two, but I’ll call it nine decades plus four. For some reason four sounds most impressive. I’m not sure why, but I think ninety-four is better.

He recently lost his bride of more years than most of us can fathom in a marriage. She was a Saint. I am a fortunate man for having lived near a Saint. I sincerely hope you have known a Saint yourself.

My nearest and dearest neighbor’s daughter asked us to look in on him a little more frequently. She was concerned about loneliness setting in. We were all concerned about loneliness setting in.

I gratefully tilled his small garden. He told me all about the seeds he planted. Spring onions grew profusely in the short patch. He claimed that Barbara loved the young onions and often told of eating onions and tomatoes right out of her father’s garden when she was a girl growing up in Cleveland.

He had up until recently, and for a good many years, with the help of his younger brother, toiled over a cow-calf operation. His brother once taught agronomy at a large college in Texas for a long tenured stretch. Glen could tell you the make and model of any weed, good weed, bad weed, Latin name and field name all. He was a veritable wealth of knowledge when it came to weeds. Glen too, has gone on now. Resting where all good Professors of agronomy from Texas go.

There in the backyard by the garden, sit a couple of severely dented galvanized water troughs for watering cattle. Relics of a cow-calf operation expired by weather, galvanic failure and the ravages of nine plus decades. One such rust infected trough now houses a stand of broccoli. A mighty and hearty stand, fertilized by the recent remnants of a cow-calf operation retired.

“Do you ever grow broccoli?” I was asked.

I admitted that it was a vegetable that I was only occasionally acquainted with, but broccoli cultivation was something I had never really considered. Corn, beans and okra were more my speed these days. Throw in some tomatoes, peppers, squash, garlic, a smattering of cucumbers and that was about as far as you could stretch my gardening credentials.

“I really like the broccoli salad they serve up at the restaurant at the crossroads. I thought I’d try to grow some. I figure my daughter can get them to give her their recipe.”

He was cooking for himself most days now.

The plants growing in the terminal galvanized trough, appeared like they would thrive. In fact, they looked like they might produce more broccoli than four or five families could consume. Bumper crop would best describe this rusty water tub garden.

That’s about the time the morning’s discussion turned to what types of vermin were living under the nearby shed. The shed had been painted once. How many decades past paint had been applied, no one was quite certain. Red, with a festive white trim, had faded to the point that red and white was now about a guess.

Why sheds get painted red always confused me.

Old faded colors were now immaterial. It was what critters were claiming a home-place under the old garden shed, that was suddenly more critically important than the acquisition of a much needed coat of Sherman Williams.

There appeared to be garden eating somethings living in luxurious comfort, burrowed under the old faded shed. The building sported a decent roof and a solid floor, and for a lazy but ambitious garden eating mammal, this abode was a five star penthouse. A country Hilton, serving up an all you can eat, complimentry spring breakfast, complete with tunneled entrances.

Young tender plants were eaten. Traps were set. I consulted with my daughter-in-law’s brother. A Canadian bear hunter and trapper who scratches out his living eliminating Canadian suburbs of beavers, coons, skunks, coyotes and ground hogs. Sweet potatoes, I was advised, did the trick. Canadian groundhogs couldn’t pass on a juicy music root.

We threw in some of Aubie’s left-over strawberries and set the live traps at every excavated tunnel under the faded critter condo.

“Come get this thing! It’s huge!”

We marveled at the large opossum and pondered how a Tennessee ‘possum knew about Canadian sweet potatoes. It was probably the strawberries.

I relocated, under the cover of darkness, the obese animal at the nearest gated community entrance. Every gated community deserves a fat and low IQ ‘possum. There are gated communities around here like there used to be dairy farms. They’re everywhere nowadays.

They’re everywhere, run amok, over sized, snooty communities, thanks to County Commissioners who profess that they really don’t want the proliferation of badly over-packed communities. But alas, they’re just a gang of weak willed politicians who really don’t want to do a @#$% thing about the infestation of jam packed houses, stacked every 10 feet apart.

I thought long and hard about leaving this ‘possum in my local Commissioner’s mail box. He deserves a fat and stupid ‘possum about once a week. But gas prices, what they are in these modern times and all, the nearest gated community just had to suffice.

Maybe a skunk in the politician’s mail box would be more appropriate. Stuffing a pissed off skunk in a Commissioner’s mail box might actually send the politically correct message. Vote your conscience, I always say.

Within days the big tub of broccoli was under attack. Whatever was eating the bushy, dark green leaves, was a rather tall varmint by all measure.

This egregious new level of degradation demanded constant surveillance. Nine decades are a very suitable age for conducting extensive surveillance. Coffee, a good book, a fired-up preacher on the radio, and an worn down easy chair is about all you need to sit in watch for varmints ten hours a day.

The raider of the big broccoli was quickly identified as a huge whistle pig. A tall, trophy ground hog, a voracious and sinister broccoli devouring varmint.

Traps were moved. Traps were emptied of potatoes. Broccoli leaves did the deed.

“Come get this thing! It’s huge!”

We stood by the sadly savaged tub of broccoli and admired the now trapped trophy. This was a true Boone and Crockett level specimen, and he was irritated to no end with his new and narrow accommodations. He’d bloodied his nose trying to sink his big front teeth in our boot when we approached his cramped jail cell. Apparently too much fresh broccoli turns whistle pigs into maximum security level, mean and loud inmates.

“You ever eat ground hog?” We’d had a very similar conversation recently about the potential culinary delights of cooking ‘possums.

After nine plus decades, I figured a country boy from a large farm family in hills of Arkansas had gotten that hungry more than once in his lengthy life.

I continued my sales pitch; “I once dated this quarter Cherokee maiden from Gainesboro for a few months or so, up at Tech. She claimed roasted ground hog and sweet potatoes were her Granny’s Sunday dinner staple. Lots of grease, but quite filling and a delicacy. I’ll clean it for you if you’re interested.”

The neighbor politely declined this most generous offer, and the jailed pig’s death sentence was immediately commuted.

“We ate a lot of squirrel and rabbit. Most of ‘em shot with a 22 rifle. Quail and gravy was my favorite. Frog legs and fried okra was a close second. We bathed every Saturday night in a number two washtub. The water was heated over a wood burning stove.”

The fat hog in the trap suddenly let out a loud whistle, and I rather reflexively gazed down the long pasture at the old barn. I thought I detected some slight movement in the tall yellow and green weed.

“Look down there by the barn. Do you see that?”

Yeh, that looks like another big one!”

The caged felon suddenly let out a second loud whistle. The accomplice in the field stood on his hind legs and loudly answered.

“You got a rifle?” I figured my neighbor, whom I’d never heard fire a shot at anything in years, probably had a firearm stashed in a closet he might remember.

“Ah, Yeh, let me go see if I can find it right quick.”

Minutes later he returned with a single shot 22 Springfield and a half empty box of badly corroded long rifles.

The free range pig continued to happily scamper around the barn pasture. I racked a tarnished round in the chamber and wished for a scope and a range finder.

This shot was probably somewhere between 100 and 120 yards. A pure guess on our part.

This was Boone, Crockett and Sgt. Alvin York level shooting. Hitting this target would be a feat of legendary marksmanship.

I’d be immediately enshrined in the “All Hamilton County Red Mist Society Hall of Fame.” People around these parts would talk about this shot for years to come. A marksmanship legend of epic proportions was about to be born.

I was trying to build some level of confidence. I wished for the scope and the range finder again.

What would Sgt. Alvin York do?

“Just how old is this gun?” I asked as I settled the stock on a fence post and looked down the iron sights for the top of the fur covered target’s head.

“Well, I got that gun for my tenth birthday. The whole family loaded up in a mule drawn wagon that warm Saturday in March, and we made the long trip to the nearest town of Pocahontas. Took us most of the day. We lived so far out in the country I’d never even heard a train whistle until that day. That was one memorable day, that birthday was.”

I tried to do the math on that year of that day. Math was never any much fun for me. The conversation about the long ago birthday was paused for a few minutes.

I thought I caught the glimpse of a man suddenly transported back eighty or so odd years, smelling that mule, pulling that rifle off the shelf of some dusty old general store, and watching a train pull into town for the first time.

“When did you sight this rifle in last?”

“That, I can’t quite recall.”

I took a deep breath. My confidence was slowly exhaled. I stepped to the plate, bottom of the ninth. Two outs, the winning run on third. Three balls, two strikes, World Series on me.

This was about the time the far away target stood tall in the weeds and I touched off the shot.

The hog did a backflip at the soft crack of the antique rifle.

‘You got him! You grazed his right ear!”

“What? You can see that from here?”

“Clear as day. You got him good in the right ear!”

I looked at the old neighbor, and the old rifle, and then watched the fat target, high tail it for the old barn like he was on fire.

The hog in the cage let out a loud whistle. He was laughing at the both of us. He was all jacked up on a broccoli high and he was gut-laughing at us.

I reloaded the old gun and considered the moral value in capital punishment and the heinous crime of over indulging in a large tub of free broccoli.

Now the other pig under the barn was suddenly laughing. I swear that he ran back out in the field, stood erect on his hind legs, and let out a lusty, lengthy whistle that was definitely some strange sort of a challenge.

I’m not certain that ground hogs can actually talk smack, but I’m sure that this fat old boy with a hot ear, was now crackin’ bad on both of us. He had definitely, suddenly issued a deadly serious challenge.

He was standing tall, and I will swear in front of a judge and jury, I saw him waving his fat paws in the air and he was giving us the middle finger.

“Did you see that?”

“I saw it. For sure I saw it. I don’t know that I’ve ever heard of it either, but I saw it, plain as day! I do declare, I simply detest rudeness in an animal!”

Neither of us had ever actually seen a ground hog give anyone the middle finger before.

The second shot missed wide. The pig let out a hearty chuckle and slowly sauntered back to the barn like some sweaty WWE wrestler who strutted around the ring after kicking @$$ all night.

I ripped off a Hail-Mary third shot and watched splinters fly off the old barn as the laughing pig slowly disappeared.

“I think we better sight this thing in. Maybe even buy you some new ammo. I don’t think his ear suffered all that much damage.”

The incarcerated pig was released at a pull-off near Dead Man Curve. Somehow that particular location seemed appropriate for the crime of fresh vegetable theft and making fun of us. There’s probably no broccoli there, but he was more than a little overweight.

Maybe he won’t waddle into traffic and commit suicide. Cold turkey from a serious addiction to broccoli probably puts those kind of sad thoughts in a groundhog’s brain at times.

If he manages his way back to the old barn, and reconnects with his rude but brave little buddy, we’ll have to high fence the tub of recovering broccoli.

I don’t think the 80-year-old Springfield will ever be put to use again. Some things just need to stay retired.

WOMR Note: I caught up with that second pig a few days later. The trail camera image is a little fuzzy, but there appears to be a diamond stud earring in the right ear. Maybe it’s really a small broccoli bud. But, some things are crystal clear in the picture. The afternoon sun gleaming on his sharp front teeth. That broccoli gut hanging down like some brother-in-law beer belly. That sneering punk-like smile, and that prominent middle finger, hoisted high and proud.

Like they say down in Louisiana, ‘It’s on like Donkey Kong’.

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