We had a gopher problem. Seems that the little bastidge has been ripping up the poor latvian folks' garden patch behind the apartment complex.
Since I don't know latvian, and I don't garden, the on-going war of the raiding rodent vs latvians downstairs has been waged pretty much un-noticed by myself. That all changed last week when my landlord (a latvian) and good flying buddy happened to mention to me that their garden was being steadily decimated my the lil critter.
"Does this varmit have a name yet?" I enquired... "Naw" sez the landlord. "Ahhh.. ok. Allow me to offer a name for this creature, and if you don't mind, possibly I can offer my services in removing him from this world for your folks downstairs. "unnhh.. ok.. anything to get the folks off my back.. they're really batiching at me about this...."
"Well, since this pest is tenacious, repeats it's incursions with annoyingly dependable regularity and is thoroughly detested by all that encounter it, I sall name it 'Raider179'. His eyebrows went up a bit, but he failed to rise to the bait on the choice of name. Guess he knows me all too well.
This morning I brewed a big pot of coffee, propped up the back kitchen window, removed the screen and set up a cherrio box rest for my new toy.. a commie SKS 'paratrooper' 16" barrel 7.62mm varmit gun. I carefully loaded 10 rounds (being uncertain regarding the number and quality of training of my adversaries, I preferred to cover all eventualities) and sat down to wait, sipping my coffee and eyeballing the garden below with a pair of Commie binoculars.
I didn't have long to wait. Right at the end of row of tomatoes was a hole.. and sure enff, Raider179 stuck his head up. I sat down the binocs, slipped behind the SKS, lined up my shot thru the A1 Optics 42mm Red Dot scope and gently took the slack outta the trigger.
"Inhale, hold it, exhale halfway, squeeze..."
*WHAM*
This afternnon, when my buddy stopped by, I mentioned that I had a gift for his folks up in the fridge. He was somehat taken aback by the headless 3 pound 2oz Raider in a Ziplock, but offered up a big smile once he heard my explanation of how it was somehow fitting that a commie gun owned by an american 'gun nut' capitalist should liberate a commie's garden from the ravages of a liberal pest.
BTW, I just got a nice gift basket of fresh zucchini's and tomatoes from the formerly oppressed commies downstairs. I reciprocated with an old VHS copy of 'CaddyShack'. It's not dubbed in Latvian, but somehow, I don't think they'll need it translated.
