Saturday, July 21, 2012

Bumpkin's Vengeance

It's not a very good idea to bully Bumpkin or her family.
It finally happened.  Bumpkin found out about birds bullying her mother and sisters.  Let's just say it's gotten a lot quieter around here.  The chirping had been out of control.  The birds seemed to be in charge, and they never let any of us forget it.  They chirped all the time: and loudly.
Bumpkin climbed out of the family hole with revenge on her mind.  The birds, like me, have trouble telling the 3 groundhog sisters apart.  Well, 2 of them anyway.  Lucinda continues to pack on the poundage, which distinguishes her from her sisters.  Anyway, it seems like Bumpkin strategically chose when she was going to emerge from her home.  There were many birds in the apartment complex at the time.  She purposefully crawled to an area that contained many black birds, which are the sort that have bullied groundhogs around here.  Sparrows, doves, and robins seem to mind their own business, but those black birds have pecked groundhogs too nastily and too often.  Bumpkin picked a spot and began to munch on weeds and grass.  It didn't take too long for one of those angry black birds to peck her in the butt.  It took even less time for Bumpkin to turn around and decapitate the bird with one casual swipe of a paw.  Then the fireballs took over.  I had seen her hurl fireballs from her paws before, but never so many and never so quickly.  She stood up on her hindquarters and shot fireballs out of both paws like Clint Eastwood used to do with bullets in spaghetti westerns.  Those fireballs came fast and furious.  One black bird exploded into flames.  Another black bird was hit.  After a while, I lost count.  I'm pretty sure she toasted at least 30 of them.  It was chaos.  She hit them on the ground and in the air.  They tried to fly away, and she picked them off one by one.  I hated seeing those birds attack groundhogs, but I didn't enjoy seeing them trying to fly away while engulfed in flames.  What's even scarier is that I didn't see her miss even once.  I think she's been practicing.
Charred black bird bodies were still smoldering when Bumpkin returned to her first victim: the one she beheaded.  She dragged the unfortunate bird to the sidewalk.  I had a feeling I knew what was coming next.  Sure enough, next to her name, she wrote "Sloopy" "Lucinda" and "Mommy" on the sidewalk in bird blood.  As far as who shouldn't be messed with around here, she left no doubt.  How far will she go though?  Sometimes the maintenance workers cut the grass and use weed whackers.  When they do those things, they scare groundhogs away.  A maintenance worker armed with a weed whacker is no match for Bumpkin.  I don't care if they hire Chuck Norris to whack the weeds here.  Chuck Norris is tough; I wouldn't want to fight him.  But what can he do about multiple fireballs coming at him with great speed?

5 comments:

  1. She is. If I didn't see it with my own eyes, I probably wouldn't believe it. I wouldn't want to mess with a groundhog anyway, because I love 'em all, but especially not her.

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  2. and you have good stories there.

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  3. Thank you! I love groundhogs; they're so cute (and quiet!).

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