Life Among The Gun Nuts

So the other day I was parked in my chair writing this here blog, when I became aware of a fly buzzing around. I ignored it for a while, but when Doc came home from work, I asked him where he kept the fly spray.

“Fly spray? Fly spray? I don’ need no steenkin’ fly spray,” he exclaimed, went away and came back with this thing, the “Bug-A-Salt(TM) The Original Salt Gun”:

For those of you unaware of this Implement of Death, it’s essentially a low-powered pump-action pneumatic shotgun which shoots table salt at insects.

So I popped the fly with the Bug-A-Salt at close range. It buzzed around a bit, somewhat erratically, so thinking I hadn’t hit it squarely, I moved the gun closer and popped the fly again. No effect. So I said a Bad Word, and gave it yet another load of salt. This time it fell to the windowsill, but it was still kicking. So I gave it one last shot, and finally the little bastard snuffed it — at least, he was still lying there a couple hours later. Four shots of salt to kill a single fly — I should have just butt-stroked the damn thing.

This alleged insect-killing device was made in China, and perhaps their flies are not as tough as our Texas flying assholes, which make a noise like a buzz-saw and can crack a window-pane with a single headbutt.

Needless to say, this caused some discussion between Doc and myself, and we came to the conclusion that we either need to drill out a larger bore on the gun barrel to increase the gross projectile weight, or use a larger shot size (i.e. coarse kosher salt), or both.

I’ll keep you posted.