Talk of the Town - Don’t shoot the house January 22 2004

When you move after lengthy residence in one place, long-buried artifacts turn up. Each tells a story. I just wish they’d be quiet.

Thus the dusty BB gun.

It is the only firearm I have ever owned, even though gun enthusiasts, of whom America has an alarming number, will tell you a BB gun is no firearm at all. It isn’t a gunpowder-initiated device, but operates on simple pump action. Compressed air rifle would be more accurate.

I bought it at a time when I was nervous, irritable, sleepless and prone to fits of rage. Which is when many of us want to use a gun. That Second Amendment comes in handy.

The cause of my agitation was something with a brain the size of a cocktail olive, a squirrel. For nigh on to two months, every morning at dawn, it tried to gain entrance to my house, busily and noisily scratching at a corner of the roof that, in some squirrelly way, seemed to betoken hospitality.

We called the exterminator, only to be told this was a job for the company’s Animal Control Division. But “control” didn’t convey the level of service I wanted. “Exterminate,” on the other hand, has a nice, clinical finality.

“You can’t poison squirrels,” I was told. “At least not in Georgia.”

That was disappointing. If there’s one place I thought you could kill a cute animal with impunity, I’d bet on the Peach State. In metro Atlanta alone we decimate some 40 acres of woodland per diem, dumping out an arkload of animals along the way. Each fall, an army of hunters goes out to shoot what’s left.

Now, the one time I wanted to push the button on a furry little critter, the authorities got sentimental. We’re not talking about the American Bald Eagle here. A squirrel is a rat with happy cheeks. There are plenty of them. If the squirrel is a protected species, let’s go all the way and proclaim the cockroach as state insect.

So the animal control guy came to the house, and right away I was disappointed. First off, he arrived in a minivan. I don’t want the person solving my wildlife problems to be mistaken for a soccer mom. Second, the only thing he carried was a clipboard. No smoke bombs, no spray guns, not even a lariat. I was expecting Schwarzenegger before he became governor of California. The Terminator in a Humvee.

Anyhow, the guy walked the yard and poked around in the attic before reporting back.

“Probably a gravid female,” he said.

“Ah,” I nodded. Because saying “ah” and nodding is what you do when you don’t know what the hell is going on.

Turns out “gravid” means pregnant. It must be an animal kingdom term, because not once have I heard someone say of a human female, “She’s six months gravid.” Or, “Can you believe Estelle is gravid after dating the guy once?”

I should have felt compassion for a mother squirrel seeking to nest. But I had an entire outdoors wide open to squirrel settlement. Pick any tree, any shrub of mine and move in. My edict on squirrels is simple, the same one Anna Karenina’s cuckolded husband issued to his wife on the subject of adultery: “Not in the house.”

The animal control people recommended an expensive solution — $750 worth of aluminum barrier around the attic perimeter. I had a cheaper answer: a BB gun with telescopic sight for $32.50.

High Noon. (Or in this case 6:45 a.m.) I was Gary Cooper, facing down the outlaw. Remember that classic cinema moment? Deserted by friends, abandoned by townsfolk, not even given an “attaboy” by his wife, played by the winsome Grace Kelly, Sheriff Gary goes out to do what must be done.

My latter-day Grace was inside. Her final words, before I went out and she went back to sleep, were: “Don’t shoot the house. Or yourself.”

I wondered about the ranking.

The first couple of mornings, the squirrel, sensing perhaps that a large, BB gun-toting man in pajamas and an overcoat was not a normal part of its habitat, didn’t show.

But the time wasn’t lost. Sitting in the back yard, I experienced that early morning calm and quietude some hunters talk about. Because then and only then, with the birds beginning to chirp and the world still abed, do you have time to ponder deeply and come to the full realization: “I really am an idiot.”

And the squirrel? On the third morning, it broke cover. I took two shots and missed. But my bushy-tailed quarry got the message, because it ceased to trouble the house. And two weeks later, a litter of baby squirrels appeared on our next-door neighbor’s roof. This called for a housewarming gift.

I sent a box of mixed nuts.

glen.slattery@creativeloafing.com

Glen “Happy Cheeks” Slattery is abed in Alpharetta.