A rat among the chipmunks

We've been having a number of unwelcome visitors at the bird feeders. Starlings. Yes, they're birds, but they're not much to look at, and they travel in packs. When there's a gang of starlings monopolizing the bird feeders, the more aesthetically pleasing birds, the ones you spend money on bird-feed to see, stay away. Chipmunks and squirrels. Cute enough in their own right, they can down $20 worth of feed in about ten minutes if they're not discouraged. And then there's the rat. He's been trying to blend in with the squirrels, and if he had a bushy tail, he could probably pull it off. Trouble with rats is if there's one there's more. I figure they're most likely coming from the barn, but there's also the compost pile fifty feet from the house. Either way, once he's at the bird-feeders, he's getting way too close. So I said to the varmits, a change is gonna come. Went to Canadian Tire and got me a CO2 air pistol. 465 fps muzzle velocity with a .177 pellet. That should be enough to make an example of Mr. Rat, and then the others would hopefully have the good sense to leave the feeders to the songbirds. The gun is a replica of a .357 Magnum. That's another reason to not live in the city. Wave that around in town and the SWAT guys will make a news story outta you in no time. I string up one of Bruno's doggie toys right by the bird feeders and do some practice shots. Between my shaky hands and the long barrel, it takes me 16 shots before I hit the target. Things are looking good for the varmits! In a perfect world, I'd be sitting here on the stoop with a shotgun. Shotguns are very forgiving of shaky hands. Ratsky would have been dispatched with the first shot. Trouble is, shotguns take you into Canada's restricted weapons territory. You need to jump through multiple layers of regulatory hoops before you legally own an actual firearm in this country. Which is not necessarily a bad thing. As a guy with two ex-wives and a few near misses I'm pretty sure I'd never have made it to retirement age if gun laws here were like Ohio or Kentucky. There's always work-arounds, of course. The teen gang-bangers in Toronto get around Canada's gun control laws by shopping in Ohio and Kentucky. If you have the tech savvy, you could make your own gun with a 3D printer. Unfortunately, my tech savvy is limited to making phone calls on my iPhone, and it took years to get the hang of that. I remember when I worked at K-Mart, you could buy an Italian made starter's pistol for ten bucks in the sporting goods department. It took .22 cal blanks, which were the same diameter as regular .22 ammo. Any kid who took a machine-shop class in high school could have turned it into a real gun in under an hour. Maybe that's why those shop teachers were always running into difficulties. I recall there was a chap at College Heights who was in a heap of trouble for creative machine shop practices. Then when I actually joined the ranks of high school shop teachers, I worked with a guy who got crucified for melting lead wheel weights, the ones you use to balance a tire, into .50 cal bullets. Apparently you weren't supposed to do that. Alas, even though I avoided illicit weapon manufacturing in my shop (the "letter-openers" with four foot blades notwithstanding), I still got in trouble with the school board. They spent a million bucks trying to fire me. The teacher's union spent the same fighting for my job. The case was before the Ontario College of Teachers for almost eight years. But that's another story.