Why I Sold My Bazooka--Humour

By

Slim Fairview

Before I tell you why I sold my bazooka, it behooves me to tell you why I bought it in the first place.

In the first place, I bought a bazooka to go hunting. Ostensibly. Now I know what you bleeding hearts are saying. So right up front I will tell you that all I bought was the bazooka.  I did not buy any bullets for it.

I say ostensibly because hunting was  the excuse  I told my wife to explain why I bought a bazooka.  You see I didn't want to worry her.  Of course, I must emphasize that I am opposed to my going hunting.  Not other people going hunting, just me.

Now,  I know there are those who defend hunting by claiming they hunt for food.  And those who reject the excuse by pointing out you can buy food at the supermarket, but let's be serious here: have you ever seen moose chops or an oven stuffer bunny rabbit in your grocer's meat case?

Still, hunting does involve getting up in the middle of the night, pitch dark, freezing  cold, and driving to the middle of nowhere, to get out of a warm car and walk deep into the forest to sit and wait for the Sun to come up.  And when it does, the ground thaws and you find yourself knee deep in mud.  Which brings us to another issue: there are no bathrooms in the forest.

After you set yourself up, you must wait for, say, a deer to go past.  Then you must shoot it.  If  you miss, the deer runs away with all the other deer in the area and you must go home.  Or, you can start walking into the forest looking for more deer.  This where other hunters are waiting for deer and you hope they don't know that you are the reason why all the other deer ran away.

However, if you wound the deer, you must track it until you find it, then kill it, unless another hunter finds it first and kills it, and you must walk back to your car and go home--deerless. If you kill the deer there is still work to be done.

You must now dress it, or undress it, but from the wrong side--the inside.  If you plan to eat it, you must check one of the organs to make sure the deer is not too sick to eat.  You must know which organ, what it looks like, and what it is supposed to look like.  If all is not well, you must walk back to your car and go home. Again--deerless.

That much done, you now carry it back to your car hoping not to get shot by someone who does not mistake your dead deer for a deer, or worse, mistake you for a dear and fires away.

If you get it home without being run off the road and killed by a non-violent, animal lover,  you must take your deer to be butchered.  I emphasize your deer because you might not get your own deer back.  Some deer are wild, some are farm raised, I don't know the difference, and presumably neither will you. But the butcher does and he knows hunters who know, and may switch your deer for someone else's deer.  Oh, and you must pay for this.

Now you have enough deer to feed your family and three other families for two years. But take heart. Etiquette says you must share your deer with others.  However, the only others who eat deer meat are hunters themselves and also have enough deer meat to feed four families for two years.  I will let you figure out the servings per pound, but it's not a pretty number.

This is why I don't hunt.  Nonetheless, I told my wife I bought the bazooka to go hunting.  My wife didn't buy it.  I broke down and confessed.

“I bought the bazooka for protection.  For your protection. To protect you. In case we have an intruder.”

That was when she got me to break down and confess that I didn't actually buy any bullets for the bazooka.

“I'm not having you shooting off bazookas  in my house.”

“But, honey, you don't understand. I just bought the bazooka. I didn't buy any bullets for it.”

“If I may ask, what good is buying a bazooka for protection if you don't have any bullets for it?”

“Easy.  If there is an intruder, all I have to do is to point the bazooka at him. He will see it, get scared, and run away.  See?”

My wife thought for a moment.  I figured I’d won her over when she said, "May I point something out?"

“Certainly.”

What happens if the intruder also has a bazooka.  But his wife doesn't love him as much as I love you and she let her husband buy bullets for his bazooka?

Then I saw the flaw in my otherwise flawless plan.  I agreed to sell my bazooka.  So, I truck on down (actually I have a compact) to the Gun Shop and Firing Range to sell my bazooka.  I tried to get as much for it as I paid for it, but there were few takers.  One fellow did agree to buy it but for much less than I wanted.  He said, "If you had bullets for it, I'd pay you a lot more."

I asked him what he wanted the bazooka for.

He said he was going to buy it for protection, but that he was going to tell his wife he was buying it to go hunting.

I see.  I just took my money and left.  I wasn't happy with what I got for it, but on the bright side, I got more for it than he’s going to get when he goes to sell it.  Come to think of it, that's how I got it for such a good price in the first place.

Warmest regards,

Slim

Copyright (c) 2013 Bob Asken

All rights reserved.