Ass Blaster

 "Relax! I got it all under control!!" Our "other buddy Rob's" banner call to action. Somewhere between "This is a job for Superman!" and "Hold my beer!". Heavily weighted, more often than not, toward their latter. Typically with kindred results.

Was well into the late July "dog days of summer". Temperatures had been soaring. Probably day four inward a mid ninety-degree heatwave. What's more, for the past two days had been hit with quite the stench first step out the front door of the sanctum sanctorum. "Wow - somethings dead!". Did a bit of investigation. First along some foundation edge brush, then into the neighbors bushes - nothing. Only other possibility is that some varmint had made it's way into the next door neighbors latticed, inaccessible under porch crawlspace where it's perished and has been lying in a state of lingering rot.

Other buddy Rob (aka: paddlin' Rob, as opposed to recently departed climbin' Rob) and I are loading a few riverboats and gear into the pickup for an afternoon paddle trip to beat the oppressive temperatures. "Phew - what the f*k stinks?!" One whiff of the fetor and Rob's off to investigate. "Found it!" he shortly announces. Don't know how I missed it - was hidden right out in the open. A bit stout 'possum had got itself wedged within the neighbors porch deck wood lattice trimming. The poor critter was a bit too wide in the hips for the narrow opening for entrance and a bit too plump in the belly to reverse his escape. Definitely a sorrowful ending in this heat with no food nor water.

Business end of the "Ass Blaster"

(Image: ''Pennsylvania Game News', February '83 issue)

Reminded us of a long remembered image from an article published in an old issue of Pennsylvania Game News ('Wildlife Misfortunes' by Will Savage, February '83). A 'possum had met its fate after it had somehow entangled its tail into an overhand knot and was left helplessly dangling from a rhododendron bush. Either way, grisly ends for both creatures.

"Well that sucks!" I comment. "We're gonna' have to saw cut that lattice to get it out of there - and that f*ker stinks!!"

"Relax! I got it all under control!!" Rob proceeds to grab the tail in one hand and both rear legs in the other and gives a pretty hefty tug. He's immediately rocketed ass-backward onto the ground. Looked like he was waylaid upside the head by an invisible sucker punch. He's sprawled - choking, heaving, gagging and gasping. Evidently, yanking with pinching the beast thru the twice too small constriction had apparently compressed the bloated belly and Rob subsequently received a direct in the face anal exhaust of noxious death gas.

Better him than me. Never laughed so hard in my life. He was down for longer than the allotted ten count - unofficially a TKO. We say unofficial as, to his credit, he quickly recovered and "jumped right back into the ring" and worked the carcass until free so it could be disposed of in some nearby woods.