ack in the day, I lived with the (1st) ex in a run-down, nasty little trailer in the wilderness of northern Michigan. Actually, the property was really nice, back in the woods, near state land. The trailer was a shit hole, but it was a nice location.
     My ex — we’ll call him “Dee”, which is short for “Dipshit” — was a real piece of work. He was a rednecked wanna-be rock star with more issues than a magazine rack, and one of his issues was that he thought he was Ted fuckin’ Nugent, the great white hunter. Right. Except, he couldn’t hit a damn thing.
     We had this great little dog that we had rescued from the pound, named Levi. Levi was probably the brightest dog I’ve ever had the pleasure of owning — I miss that dog to this day. He was also, unfortunately, a stubborn little cuss. So, one day, I let him out for a run, and awhile later Levi comes back with a snout full of porcupine quills.
     He was a good dog, knew the quills had to come out, so he sat still while Dee and I pulled the quills out with pliers and got him all doctored up. Some time passes, an hour or two, and Levi wants out again, so I let him out. Sure enough, he comes back with more porcupine quills. We doctor him up again. Wash, rinse, repeat a third time, and now we realize that this porcupine must be right near by, and that we’re going to have to deal with it, because now Levi has a mad-on for vengeance against the evil porcupine.
     So, Dee loads up his .410, one shell, and goes out for a look around, locating the porcupine living in the neighbor’s tipped-over trash can. (The neighbors were vacationers, only came up on weekends once in awhile, so no one was home over there.) So, to sum up, what we have here is a big, fat porcupine in a small trash barrel. I’m in the house, cleaning up Levi for the third time, and I hear the shotgun and figure, “Well, there’s that taken care of.”
     Dee comes back into the trailer, gets another shell, griping because he missed. He missed a critter in a barrel. Okay. So out he goes again. I hear the shotgun again. “Okay, now it’s dealt with.” I think.
     In he comes again, now pissed. He gets another shell and leaves without a word, tromping back over to the neighbor’s yard. Another shot. Another miss. At this point, I’m biting back giggles when he comes back in, because . . . well, ever heard that phrase, “easier than shooting fish in a barrel”? Yeah, apparently my ex didn’t find shooting fish in a barrel all that easy. Took him three or four shots before he finally hit and killed the stupid thing.
     Another time, Dee was pissing and moaning that he wanted a bird dog so he could hunt birds. Well, I’d seen Levi hunting birds in the yard, so I suggested he try taking Levi out. Turns out, Levi was a natural bird dog. He was great at finding and pushing birds, loved going out to hunt, all that. First trip or two out, this was one happy dog. Third or fourth trip, the ex goes out in the woods, and a awhile later, Levi comes back alone. Dee turns up awhile after that, pissed because the dog left him in the woods. The next several trips, the same thing occurs. Levi would go ahead to push the birds out of cover, and then circle around and come home, leaving Dee in the woods.
     Mind you, of all the birds that Levi had pushed for him, Dee hadn’t hit a single one of them. My theory is, the dog got tired of doing all that work for nothing, and would leave the ex standing in the woods like the fool that he was.
     Well, VC sent me this video this morning, and the only thing we can figure is that my ex is making hunting videos now. So, a Saturday Toast to my idiot first ex, and to crappy hunters the world over!

Playing the Popularity Game:

This entry was posted on Saturday, April 19th, 2008 at 12:18 pm and is filed under Toasts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.