Conspiracy Resolved, pt I.

"You're shooting your food!" -- Kate Hepburn in Rooster Cogburn


Yes, there is Something Wrong with shooting food. I don't mean that Jed Clampett thing with the rabbit-- hunting good! Me like hunting! I mean there's something inherently evil in shooting food that has already been successfully hunted or gathered.

But hey. Forget all that. It's FUN dammit. Ritz crackers are great for plinking with a .22, and overripe melons are a hoot to assault with a 12-gauge, and an aged-on-the-porch institutional size container of yellow mustard just beckons to be blasted with a .357 magnum revolver.

Such was the case on Sunday. The mustard was mellowing (fermenting) for years on the back porch, the case of Coors beer for a week or so. The beer was the correct temperature, the condiment was asking for it, and all three of us went for a walk out behind the chicken house.

I set the barrel-o-mustard on top of a bank of snow and marched-off twenty paces. Aiming low, in military fashion, I touched-off the big Ruger to hear it's response of "DOOM"!
The plastic jug leapt in the air at the impact of the hollow-point round, and, no lie--came towards me! "Hunh?" says I. Then a "*burp* Huunnh?"

Walking back to the "target" I was met halfway by the awful offal of the cannister-- yellow-brown stains covering an area of snow as large as my living room-- and nearly all of it on my
side of the impact zone. Having expected a "fantail" of mustard beyond and behind the spot where I had placed the jug, I was more than a little surprised.

Then I remembered that Zapruder film, and it was OK.