Me vs. My Cat -- pt. Two

And going for three posts in a row,....

I've been sitting amongst Coyotes this week. Multiple times this week, of sitting among 4 and 5 of them at a time, while sitting behind my patio blind, while they play around, and drink from Sarges bird bath bowl. They're as close as 10' away from me. One of them also left me a Lab sized deuce to clean up. They've been playing on the gravel that once was a lawn, just outside of the blind.

Yeah, I understand.
But, Kitty lived amongst them here for a couple of years prior to adopting us, full time, as an outdoor cat that was returning to feral life. She seems to understand how to live in that enviro.
Now days, she seems to be sticking really close to the rear patio, and not so much into wandering the wild edge.

Last night, I got my first Rat with my newly renovated Crosman 2289 that I've converted to a .177 16" barrel. The thing shoots like a laser.

And, last nights trip out to the Red Light District,.... I was in bed, sawing logs, by 9pm

You know what I never see the next morning?
The Sunflower seeds are always gone. The only thing left of those are the splintered shells.

Bandito said:

Mike, your rats are always lazy and simply laying there. They don't have any get up and go to them. Be Well, Bandito.

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and,.... lazy.
But they like having their tummies rubbed.

I have another battlefield. It is my generator shed. I've plugged a bunch of mice in there with my Beeman P17, and Q-Tips/Burger Picks. In fact, I took out a number of batches of babies as well. I thought that I had won that battle, by myself, as i had not seen any mice in there in a couple of months.
Well,.....
I went out there to lift the lid (tilt-up roof), and I found this:




It is the shedded skin of an Alligator Lizard, a native Skink, and of about this size, which is a really large one:




At this size, they will eat mice.
In my early renovations of this yard, I pulled apart an old rotten shrub root. Under it was a colony of Voles, and, living among them, and feeding off of them, was a couple of these lizards that were likely twice as large as the shedded skin, or, linked image.

I have an ally covering my back at the Gen.Shed.

TN_Yankee said:

Ah, so you're near Ventura Highway!

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If that is a question to me,.... nope.
I'm in northern San Diego County, near a little town called Rainbow. We do, however, have a highway called Old 395 that rolls through here; kind of a neat old road.
We are in the Rainbow creek watershed/drainage, and literally have a seasonal stream that crosses the southeast corner. These seasonal streams are scary here in SoCal. No one declared it in the home sale papers. So it was a great surprise when it started flowing [eyes pop out smilie here].

beerthief said:

Wonderful morning reading over my coffee time , cool gun you have built , Fantastic yard too !
Stan in KY.

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Thank you!
Our place was a gem in the rough. I've been working on it since we bought it.
I'm a rock gardener, and, an exquisite fine home finisher. I have two homes in Architectural Digest magazine; with one of them as a magazine cover, and featured article. The other is as a featured article.
I'm since retired, and can now do this stuff for myself, and have thrown myself at it, massively. My rock garden is hundreds of thousands of tons of stone that I collected from roadside bluff collapses, highway projects, and off-road adventures; a huge amount of stone, all free.
But retirement being what it is, doesn't provide an open checkbook for cool toys. So, I build out what I have, and make it last.
thanks again.

@TN_Yankee

Ahh yes,.... the morning coffee is just now kicking in. my bad.

From last nights visit out to the Red Light District,....

I woke up at 3am; had to take a leak. I went to the window that overlooks the RLD, and sure enough, it was just as a Rat emerged into the light. So I grabbed my Crosman, and out I went.
I pumped it, and loaded it before I stepped out. I had a little 'stickiness" in loading the pellet, and it felt weird going in. And then, just as quickly, I forgot about it.
So, I went out, and, within a few minutes, a Rat emerged. I took aim, and fired. My POA was a vitals shot, running from in front of its front legs, and aiming across the vitals diagonally. I fired,.....
The thing just vanished.
So, I went back to bed.

This morning, over coffee, I got thinking about the way that the pellet felt odd on loading, and, I had to check out a theory. Did I load the pellet backward? IOW,... skirt first?
I'd never loaded a pellet in reverse, intentionally. So I had to try it, and see what happens.
Since I've been working on my Crosman, I keep my target pellet trap right next to my Rat gallery. So, I pumped up to 10, loaded a backwards pellet, took aim, and fired.
Was it wildly out off target? Did I hit where I was aiming?

Even intentionally loaded backwards, I only missed my pencil eraser-sized target dot by 1/4" at 35'
And, I could see by the evidence that the pellet flew to target and hit the target while still flying backwards, as there was a broad, perfectly round pellet skirt mark left where it hit my white target background. Even flying intentionally backwards, it stayed fairly accurate.

another weird lesson learned in pellet gunning.

I ordered and installed a flat valve for the Crosman, because the forearm popped open on me wit the rifle in my lap (at pumped level 10). I commonly sit behind my blind with the rifle on my knees/lap.
The forearm swung around, popped open, and caught me in the junk. I decided that this was the loudest suggestion that I was going to get that I needed to do something.
This new valve, which arrived yesterday, seems to have reinvigorated it. Its a bit louder now, and by the sound my steel plate is making in my pellet trap, it is getting hit harder.
I pumped it up to 15, and, it stayed closed and stable. yea



This sign, ^, is at my across-the road-neighbors entry. He has a property full of Macadamia Nut tress, and, his immediate neighbor has many acres of Macadamia Nut trees that are essentially abandoned, and provide the finest meals possible for rodents.

This might be the right time to tell tales of the Macadamia Nut rodents?

nah,.... we popped two more rats last night. So, posting priority goes to current Rat plinking,.... I'll eventually get to Daves Shed stories. They're good ones.