Any time someone moves into a new house, there are all sorts of things you need to worry about. I don't need to list them on here, but I know one big worry is always who your neighbors will be. Back in the summer of 2001, after a year of living in the hell hole apartment in Chesterfield, the Felax 3 (4 was on the way) moved into a quaint little home on the far north end of Port Huron. The house was a huge improvement from the apartment, and we finally had a place to call our own. Three bedroom, two bathroom, and a huge eat-in kitchen that pretty much sold Holly on the place right away. There was a nice deck in the back of the house that overlooked a HUGE backyard. Although the lot we lived on was fairly narrow, it was nearly 400 feet long, which in a city like Port Huron is HUGE.
Shortly after moving in, it was time to meet the neighbors. On the south side of our house was an elderly couple that only lived there a few years. They were good folks, but they made Hugh Hefner look young. My fondest memory of the old man (still have no idea what his name is...I knew it at one time but no longer know) came one day when we were getting ready to head up north to visit family. I was out on the back porch for some reason or another, and the old man was working on his riding lawn mower. I honestly think the lawn mower was older than he was. He had been working on it for a while, and then all I keep hearing was things to the effect of, "God damn, sumbitchin piece of shit!" and "Ah, this @#$#ing mother f$!$er...ain't worth a goddamn dime." I could sense his frustration level rising higher and higher, and even though it was entertaining as hell to listen to him, I decided to lend a hand. I'm not a gear head by any stretch, but I thought maybe I could help him out a bit and ease his tension. Well...we worked on that damn old piece of crap for about two hours as Holly and the kids were waiting to leave, but I'll be darned if we didn't get it working. He was incredibly thankful to me and it felt good to help out. He ended up passing away some time later that year and when his family came to move his wife out of the house and into an assisted living home, I spoke briefly with his son outside. I told him the story of when I helped his dad fix that old mower, so as a good will gesture, he told me I could have it. I was flattered, but I really didn't think it even worked any more. Later that day I fired it up, and I'll be darned if I didn't use that mower for almost two years before it finally quit on me. I guess sometimes good deeds pay off:)
To the north of our house was a big, aging, white house with a rickety old detatched garage that never seemed to ever be open. The man that lived there came over one day and introduced himself to me and my family. He was an older gentleman with gray hair and a strong build for an old guy, and I remember him shaking my hand and saying, "Storm. Storm Bradt." All I could think was that was one kick ass name, and as it turned out, he was one kick ass neighbor. He was divorced and had two adult sons that came around once in a while, but he was the definition of everything you'd want a neighbor to be. Cheyenne was still very young and she looked up to Storm as sort of a grandpa, and he treated as such. Shortly after meeting Storm, I would look outside and see Cheyenne following him around his yard like a shadow. Storm loved plants and flowers, and spent hours on end grooming the different types of foliage he had growing around his lawn. I would holler to Cheyenne and tell her to leave poor Storm alone, but he had none of it. "She's fine..she's just helping me out." In addition, he ALWAYS bought Christmas presents for her (and for Kennedy after she was born). He would buy them little trinkets or tree ornaments, and he never missed a Christmas. He was the perfect neighbor.
Then in the summer of 2006, we both started noticing that something was digging up holes around my shed. (Storm was VERY observant, even when it came to our house. He was good to have around when we went on vacations up north.) I thought at first that it was a gopher or something like that, but the holes seemed to be really big and they were causing some damage to the side of my shed. So one night I left some food out in the middle of our yard, just beyond the back porch, just to see if I could see what was back there. Sure enough, not long after the sun went down, I flipped the light on and saw what I was hoping I wouldn't see...a damn skunk! Wait...no....make that about 4 or 5 of them. This isn't good.
The next day, I spoke with Storm and told him what I saw, so we came up with a plan. It was a simple plan, but it ended up evolving into one of the most ridiculous and humorous things I've ever been involved with. Storm loved to shoot his BB guns out the back window of his house at pests that were bothering him, but I don't think he ever really hit anything. He told me that he had a pellet gun in the house as well and that I could use it to peg off the skunks if I wanted to, but he asked that I give him a call and let him in on the action. Obviously, it was an offer I couldn't refuse. Later that night, I set out some "bait" and waited for the skunks to show up. Just like clockwork, they appeared and started munching away on the goodies I left out for them (basic household scraps covered in bacon grease was a favorite). I called Storm and he told me to wait for him.
At this point, it's important to know how our houses were arranged. Our master bedroom was located in the northeast corner of the house, which meant we had one window that faced the back yard and one window that faced Storm's house. Storm's back door (the door he used 99% of the time) was on the south side of his house, so our bedroom window faced directly at his back door. Since the lots were so narrow, his back door was probably only about 20-30 feet from out window, which made our hunting adventures much more possible. Storm also had a large boat in his driveway and we had a small playhouse in the back as well, which provided a cover for him to come out of his door and not be seen by the prey. Yeah, I say "prey" like we were hunting wild beasts.
I waited for Storm on this first night to get outside and set up his rifle (aka Red Rider BB Gun) and once he was in position, I carefully opened up my back window and set my own assault rifle (aka pellet gun) on the window sill and took aim. Storm was only a few feet away at the time so I counted to three and we opened fire. And by "opened fire", I guess I mean we technically shot one time since Storm could only get off one shot every few seconds and it took me about 30 seconds to get off my next shot since I had to load and pump that damn thing like 10 times. The good news is that we ended up killing one of the skunks that night. The bad news was that they sprayed the shit out of my house and there were still like 3 or 4 other skunks there that we still needed to get. The best part of the kill in hindsight was our reaction. We seriously celebrated like we were soldiers that just survived a tour in the jungles of Vietnam.
The next day, I walked outside and it smelled like I stepped into the ass of a skunk. The stench was overwhelming, but I was still happy nonetheless. I got a shovel from the shed and carefully lifted the skunk onto it and walked it all the way to the back of my yard where I dug a hole under a large tree and buried kill number one. Fortunately, the next couple nights were successful as well and I got to bury skunks number two and three under the tree as well. I was convinced that I was the one hitting the skunks and that Storm kept missing, so that is why I kept burying them. We had a deal that whoever got the kill shot had to bury the kill...and I was fine with burying them.
But then we ran into a bit of a problem. Most of the skunks that we had killed up to this point were young ones that were fairly small and easy to kill. The problem was that the mama skunk was still alive and she was a total pain in the ass. We tried unsuccessfully for several nights to kill this damn thing and she just wouldn't die. I knew that I had hit her at least once, but apparantly she wasn't going to go down without a fight. As soon as we would start shooting, she would run away (most of the time to under my damn shed that she was tearing to shreds). So I needed to come up with a plan...and I did. It was quite possible the dumbest plan on the face of the planet and the likelihood of it working in my mind was probably about 5% if I were to highball it.
So here was the plan. My father-in-law had given me a bunch of long metal stakes a few years prior to put up a fence around the garden in the back yard, so I took one and pounded it into the ground right by where the bait was. After pounding it in, it still stuck out of the ground about three feet or so. Then I took a section of chicken wire that was about 5 or 6 feet long and I weaved it onto the metal pole on one end of the section of wire. Since the chicken wire was in a roll, it had a natural curve to it, which worked perfectly for my "plan". So the stake was stuck in the ground with a section of chicken wire attached to it and it looked like the letter "C". The opening of the "C" shape was facing toward the house. Now came the hard part...and this took me forever to get right. I took several short pieces of rope and tied them at different heights to the end of the chicken wire on the end opposite the metal post. (Bear with me...I know it sounds confusing). I think there were about 3 spots that I tied the chicken wire up. I then took each of the sections of rope that were tied to the chicken wire and looped them around the metal post and tied them together once they were totally looped around. So basically, if I were to pull on the ropes, it would pull the "C" shaped chicken wire closed and form a makeshift "trap". The problem was then figuring out how to make it possible to activate the trap without getting too close and scaring away the skunk. I had several short chunks of rope that I tied together to form one long rope, and I tied that to the spot where the other three ropes were tied together. It was long enough to reach my bedroom window, so now the trap was set...sort of.
There was no way this could work. I had a makeshift trap set up with an old re-bar post, some chicken wire, and a whole bunch of smaller sections of rope tied together. What could go wrong, right? I tested the trap and it actually seemed to work, but I still had doubts that this would actually help us kill the skunk. So then the time came...it was getting dark and Storm and I were getting pumped. Just like clockwork, mama skunk showed up shortly after dark and started eating the delicious morsels that I had set out inside the "C" trap. I called Storm and he got into position. The rope was dangling inside my bedroom (I closed it in the window earlier) so I grabbed hold of it and slowly opened the window. I looked at Storm and he gave me the go ahead so I pulled that sucker as fast as I could...and I'll be damned if it didn't work! I trapped the skunk and Storm opened fire. I could tell that he was hitting the skunk but I couldn't help out because I was holding the rope for dear life. He must have shot 25 BB's until he was convinced that it was dead and we must have woken the neighbors with our celebrations.
The next morning I told Storm that he had to bury the skunk, and he absolutely refused. I told him, "Bullshit Storm, rules are rules...YOU had the kill shot, so YOU have to bury it!" He reluctantly agreed and I saw him take the skunk out to "the tree" to bury it. At this point, I thought our hunting was over, but man was I wrong.
That night I set out some "bait" just to make sure that we got all the critters that were roaming our neighborhood and wreaking havoc. Nothing. I checked every 10 or 15 minutes but still nothing. By this time, I had already informed Holly that she would have to be involved in holding the trap shut so that I could help Storm shoot the skunk, but nothing was showing up. So right before I get ready to go to bed (it must have been 11 or 11:30), I take one more look out the back window and I couldn't believe what I saw. The skunks were indeed dead, but in its place was a damn opossom! Not even thinking about how late it was, I picked up the phone and dialed Storm. As I was dialing, I told Holly to get her ass into the bedroom...it was go time!
I could tell that I woke Storm because he was groggy as hell, but I knew that if I got a kill without telling him, he would be pissed. Holly and I are down in the bedroom and waiting for Storm to come out, and I'll be damned if he doesn't come out and hide behind his boat, decked out in nothing more than a white t-shirt and some whitey tighties. Holly and I were laughing our asses off. He was so groggy and tired that he forgot to put pants on, but heaven knows he remembered his BB Gun. His hair was messy and he wasn't wearing his glasses, but he set his sights on the opossom and gave me the sign that he was ready. I pulled the rope tight and handed it to Holly, who was propping herself against the wall and pulling as tight as she could so that we could fire away.
Let's picture this for a second. A 60 year old man in his underwear with a BB Gun, Holly holding the rope of a makeshift trap, and me shooting a pellet gun once every 30 seconds or so and pumping it so fast that more often than not my arms were shaking by the 7th pump. We killed the opossom that night, but I'm sure that he was laughing his ass off. The next morning, I had the duty of burying the possom. I took him out to the cemetary tree and when I got there, I noticed something odd. First of all, there was a stench of a dead animal, and when I looked closer, I could see a bloated, dead skunk sticking out of the ground. It turns out that "burying" the animal had a different definition to me than to Storm. When it was his job to bury the last skunk, he literally dug a hole about 8 or 10 inches deep, laid the skunk in it, and then covered it with some dirt, leaves, and twigs...as though late night scavengers wouldn't catch on. I dug down about 2 feet or so and buried both the skunk and the opossom together. I gave Storm a bunch of crap about his pathetic burying job, but he was oblivious. From that point forward, I did the burying:)
And this continued...for weeks and weeks. Every single night I would set out dinner leftovers and we would wait for the pests to come. More often than not, we got nothing. The animals were wising up and weren't showing up until after we went to bed, but that didn't stop us from trying. I remember calling Storm at all hours of the night...sometimes as late as 2 or 3 AM...if I got up to go to the bathroom and saw something in our trap. We eventually bought a pair of spotlights to use as well since our porch light wasn't quite bright enough. Holly eventually got pretty good at pulling the rope and holding it tight while at the same time shining a spotlight on the trap. One night we even caught a raccoon in the trap. He just stood there for a second like, "Ok, what the heck is going on here", but as soon as we opened fire, he climbed his ass out of that trap just as fast as we could lock him in there. The coon was the only one to escape the trap, and we just accepted that we would probably never get him.
When it was all said and done, to my best estimation I would say that we killed between 4 and 5 skunks and about the same amount of opossoms. We had other opportunities, but lets face it...we were not exactly great white hunters.
As it turned out, that summer would be our only opportunity to hunt the neighborhood critters. Storm got sick with cancer some time in 2007 and was not around or as active as he usually was. We ended up moving into our current house in the Spring of 2008, and leaving Storm as a neighbor was one of the hardest parts about moving. We said our goodbyes and that was that. He was much skinnier and weaker than he had ever been, but he seemed to be in good spirits. Shortly after we moved, we returned to the house for some reason or another, and people that lived there said that someone came looking for us the day before. They described the guy as a "goth-looking" dude and he specifically asked for me, but I had no idea who it was. A day or two later, I was looking through the Times Herald (local newspaper) and I just happened to open up to the obituaries and I was shocked to see the name "Storm V.Z. Bradt". The goth looking guy that was looking for me was Storm's son, there to tell me that Storm had passed away.
We attended his funeral and I cried harder than I expected I would. I thought about all the nice things he did for us and for the girls, but more than anything...I thought about that Summer of 2006. That summer where two idiots (three if you count Holly) with BB and pellet guns had the time of their lives protecting the neighborhood from pests of all kinds. He was a great guy, but most of all he was a great neighbor...and he is missed.
Until next time...
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