Joys of Country Living

It's usually quite peaceful out here in the country until you are abruptly reminded that there are idiots in the world when you hear an automatic weapon going off very close to the house at 10:30 at night. We were all snuggled in our bed watching Robin Hood on HBO when we heard 5 shots very close together and quite close to the house. WTH? We both looked at each other and said "That was close." and got out of bed to look out the window making sure there wasn't any light behind us that they could see. We could see a pickup and a couple of people walking around on for something. We weren't sure what, but they got in their pickup and proceeded down the county road, a few more shots were fired a little further down from us. They then came back and drove in our driveway half ways up into the yard. It's like, "What the Hell do they think they are doing?" Are they drunk? I thought Jack was about to get the shotgun and go see when they backed up and went back to where they started. He said later that if they hadn't backed up, he would have. Usually, when folks stop in our driveway they only come in far enough to turn around, but these yea-hoos came half way up and that was a little too invasive for me and Jack. It was pretty crazy to have someone firing an automatic so close to one's house, let alone at night!

In the morning we went to look to see if we could figure out what the ___ they were doing last night. On the north side of our road we found a blood trail of some poor creature that got killed and they must have been looking for it when they were out of their truck. There was a pretty distinct blood trail but not much for tracks of the animal, so we were thinking it was probably a rabbit or fox that they killed. Probably a rabbit because we have had a pair of Jack Rabbits in our yard all winter that Rusty is always looking for and we only saw one this morning. The one rabbit we saw was going all over the yard following the trails that the both of them had made. I was almost wondering if it was looking for its buddy.

I did find a brass casing which Jack said was from an automatic rifle. A .223 to be exact. Could have a 30 round clip but don't know for sure. How sporting is that? You couldn't miss anything with that. I was wondering why the shots were so close together. It also looked like they had reloaded the brass casing. The tracks were of someone wearing those goofy athletic shoes that have the springs in the heel. It left a pretty weird track. And, someone else with just plain boots or shoes.

So it they do that again, they better stay out of our yard. Prbably should have called the Sheriff's office. Next time, I probably will.