Gopher Hunting

After church today I'm heading into the mountains for a week with my boy scouts. I'm so into this blogging thing that if I thought I would have a connection I would take my laptop with me. I don't know if that is a good thing or a bad thing. It feels like an obsession but is it bad to want to write my history and to keep a journal? I'll be back with all of you next week with lots of pictures of some 12 and 13 year old boys.
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OK, I have to make a confession about a weakness I have. A generation ago I know this wouldn't have been considered a weakness but I like to kill things. I remember when I used to car pool to Global with George Riel and I would see a gopher on the road I would try and hit it. For some reason I got a real thrill when the gopher would stand tall and motionless and I would line up my tire on the thing and "whack". A nice clean hit. It about brought George to tears when I'd do that but I couldn't help myself no matter how hard he pleaded with me. He used to tell me that I'd have to face that gopher in the next life and explain to him why it was necessary for me to take his life. I assured him that when I met that gopher I'd apologize to him. When I was young I would stick firecrackers in ant hills and throw rocks at birds. As I got older I realized that evil in my tendencies and forced myself to not kill anything that I wasn't going to eat. The only exceptions were gophers and mosquito's. I didn't figure I'd have any problem explaining to the mosquito why I needed to kill him. My rule on the road was I'd go out of my way to hit a gopher, I wouldn't dodge rabbits and cats but I wouldn't go out of my way to hit them either. I would try to safely avoid dogs and I would risk an accident to avoid a dear or cow. I tried duck hunting once but I didn't really like to eat duck so I never went again. I do love to eat moose, elk and deer so I went hunting every year. Did pretty well too. We always had meat in the freezer from the time I moved to Rosemary until we moved away. Sadly, I haven't been hunting since. My favorite activity however was gopher hunting. Lisa was a lot more willing to let me go for an afternoon of hunting if I took the kids so that is what I did. Gary Norton was more than happy if I got rid of some of his gophers so off I went with Kira and Brandon. When Kira was old enough to want to play with those cuddly little creatures I had to put the fear into her. I told her how evil gophers were because they dug holes that made the irrigation ditches leak and the cows could step into their holes and break their legs. They also ate a lot of grain and that cost the farmers money. I then warned her that if I wounded a gopher that she couldn't touch it because it would bite her. I remember one day that I was out at Gary's farm and there were gophers everywhere. I would park the van and shoot five or six and then move to another spot and shot another five or six. I was getting good enough that I would try and take out their eyeballs. Kira and Brandon were quite anxious to inspect the dead animals too. I then saw a coupe of baby gophers and took out both of them. When Kira saw them up close she got very sad and was near tears. "Why do we have to kill the babys?" she asked. I told her that the baby's would grow up to be big gophers some day. "Can't we let them grow up and then shoot them?" How do you answer that?