Ask you guys to send in funny gun-related stuff, and you don’t send squat. Run just one teeny little article about an attack by an assault monkey, and you menagerie-minded maniacs go into overdrive.
Apparently, some significant percentage of our readers are fish-and-fur-fight fanatics. I guess there ain’t no accounting for taste. So here’s a sampling of the weird critter tales you’ve sent me:
Coon Toss
You didn’t catch this one on CNN, but it was a headline in the Syracuse, N.Y., Herald Journal: “Woman Hurls Dead Raccoon At Lawyer.”
The lady was arrested following a scuffle with her neighbor, an attorney, after he allegedly knocked her down onto a road-killed raccoon. The story said she then grabbed the recumbent raccoon and hurled it with malicious intent.
The outcome of this case is unknown — perhaps a reader in Syracuse can help us out — but it should be noted that American Handgunner wants to go on record deploring the secondary use of brainwave-challenged victims of highway violence as missiles, even when thrown at lawyers.
In our view, not only is this an inexcusable exploitation of ravaged raccoons, but a fundamental violation of a long-standing American cultural value. Rotting fruit!, we say, over-aged eggs!, we implore you, but in the name of all that’s decent, leave our honored road-killed ’coons out of the messy business of barrister-bashing.
Haven’t they — the raccoons — suffered enough already?
Don’t Move! I’ll Fowl Ya
So, if you had a gun that could fire poultry at high velocity, what could you hunt with it? Aircraft, apparently, but without too much success. According to Business Week magazine, a testing laboratory used a “gun-like device” to blast fowl at a new type of aircraft windshield.
“To measure resistance against flying objects, engineers recently fired chicken carcasses at 300 mph at the windshield of the new Saab-Fairchild turboprop airplane.” The windshield held, but according to a spokesman, “Mud, blood, and feathers were everywhere.”
American Handgunner isn’t impressed. If they could develop a revolver capable of shooting frozen squirrels at 900 fps, now there, you’d have something!
No Kidding, Really
Now visualize a young man the medical journal called Dexter relaxing on the couch in his apartment watching TV. Very much like any other working stiff on the weekend, he’s just kicking back and enjoying the company of his pet rattlesnake, snoozing on his belly.
That is, the snake is resting on his belly on Dexter’s belly. Dexter later reports he suddenly sneezed, which startled the snake, causing it to bite Dexter on the lip.
The rattler — we’ll call him Ralph — is a fully-fanged, standard-issue unmodified venomous pit viper. Pause here to note that “experts in this area” remain unnamed. What area? Pit viper lip-bites?
Anyway, the experts do not believe Dexter’s story. Instead they think he is one of a select few nutcases who are fascinated, even sexually aroused, by close observation of the flicking action of snake tongues.
Caught up in their obsession, they sometimes actually try to kiss the snake. On the tongue. as circumstantial evidence, they cite the fact that Dexter was previously bitten under similar circumstances by a former pet, in that cased a venomous Habu snake, native to Okinawa.
So Dexter is bitten on the lip, causing him some degree of discomfort and involuntary animation, a condition possibly exacerbated by sudden onset of a neurosis we’ll call “fear of pending death.”
Now the real tomfoolery begins. Dexter’s roommate offers to help, explaining he heard somewhere that rattlesnake venom can be neutralized by running electrical current through the bite site.
The two rocket scientists adjourn to the apartment parking lot, where roomie hooks up jumper cables to Dexter’s lip, connects them to the battery of his car, jumps in and fires ’er up!
Concerned neighbors observe this unorthodox holistic treatment and summon paramedics.
When parameds arrive, they find roomie sitting in his ride revvin’ the engine and suckin’ down a cold one. They inquire as to how long Dexter’s been unconscious on the pavement, connected by 18-gauge rubber-shrouded twin-cabled lip-umbilicus, just twitchin’ and smokin’. Roomie answers that he ain’t sure, because the hood was up and he couldn’t see too good.
Dexter lived, and as far as we know didn’t even kill his roomie after being released from the hospital. Dexter lost a considerable portion of lip due to the effect of venom and electrical burns. He might also have lost some brain cells. Maybe. Who could tell?
Concealed Turkey
Two Haitians have been arrested and charged with stuffing handguns into frozen poultry and smuggling them to members of the Haitian secret police.
Patrick Louiseau and Florence Toussaint pleaded guilty to federal firearms charges after it was discovered they were buying .380 pistols, stuffing them into defrosted turkeys, refreezing the gobblers, and carrying them as luggage on trips to Haiti.
They could have stuffed a bazooka into a pig, but it wouldn’t fit under an airline seat.
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The 10 Ring is written by Commander Gilmore, a retired San Diego police officer who bases his humor, like Mark did, on actual occurrences. All the incidents described by the Commander are true.