[Sca-cooks] Death to Tree Rats! Was Fruit Trees

[Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius]

On Jun 19, 2005, at 4:55 PM, Daniel Phelps wrote:

> Was written:
>
>
>> how do you make a wire noose snare?
>>
>>
>
> It has been over 30 years since I was shown how but it is pretty  
> simple.
> What you want is a flexable piece of steel wire like a fishing  
> leader.  You
> bend it into a just over squirrel head sized loop and tie it back  
> on itself
> with anyone of several slip knots.  Some premade fishing leaders  
> might not
> require anything but bending and clipping back on themselves.  You  
> then lay
> a 5 foot or so branch from the ground to the tree at about a 45  
> degree angle
> and attach a number of the nooses about three feet up the branch.    
> Mr.
> Squirrel runs up the branch sticks his head in a noose, keeps on  
> going and
> hangs himself.   There was an SCA merchant who used to make pellet  
> firing
> crossbows.  Of course you could shoot the beasts with a sling shot/ 
> wrist
> rocket using ball bearings.  No noise, pretty cheap and not a  
> firearm.  Or
> you could Jim Bowie them with a throw knife,  David sling them,  
> Mingo them
> with a tomahawk, dart them with a blow gun etc, ... just takes  
> practice.
>
> Daniel

My brother has an exceptionally vicious device that looks like a  
cross between a pipe bomb, a guillotine, and a standard rat trap.  
Basically it's a rat trap which you bait with whatever, and the  
fluffy-tailed evildoer is compelled to enter the trap from an angle  
that pretty much assures no escape, a proper and quick broken neck,  
and no long, painful, drawn-out head-grabbing. He used it once, and  
he said it was so unpleasant that he retired it.

I have a neighbor who may be a certifiable psychopath, and he  
protects his little balcony garden with some kind of plastic-pellet  
gun that's probably illegal in New York City. He shot my wife once,  
by accident, in a fragmented ricochet off a parked car on the street.  
She was unhurt, and angry enough to inform him (~275 pounds, 6' +)  
that she (~103 pounds, 4' 11.99") was going to kick a certain bodily  
portion of his up until it filled his empty head, and he avoided her  
for about a year.

We keep a large Super-Soaker water gun, which we fill with water, a  
small amount of dish detergent, and plenty of inexpensive red chili  
oil. Lately they haven't come close enough to squirt, because our  
first line if defense is pretty effective, given the small area we  
need to protect: we keep a supply of fresh green jalapenos which we  
split down the middle and rub all over the iron railing, like  
seasoning a French wooden salad bowl by rubbing it with a cut garlic  
clove. We have to remember to replace the coating after every rain,  
but it works quite well. I haven't had the chance to squirt one of  
those smug, unacknowledged children of unmarried parents in the eye  
in quite a while.

Adamantius



"S'ils n'ont pas de pain, vous fait-on dire, qu'ils  mangent de la  
brioche!" / "If there's no bread to be had, one has to say, let them  
eat cake!"
     -- attributed to an unnamed noblewoman by Jean-Jacques Rousseau,  
"Confessions", 1782

"Why don't they get new jobs if they're unhappy -- or go on Prozac?"
     -- Susan Sheybani, assistant to Bush campaign spokesman Terry  
Holt, 07/29/04