Contrast

My wife is a women of contrast. I'll give you an example. She noticed that a squirrel was pulling the stuffing out of our patio furniture. She asked me why the squirrel was doing this. I reply "To build it's nest" She said she didn't care about the squirrel's nest and she wanted the squirrel to stop. Here is where the problem began.

Now like all men, women pay attention, we are problem solvers. Don't come to us with an issue if you are not looking for a solution. That's how we work. It is en grained into our DNA. If your looking to just Bitch and Whine, call your girlfriend. You present the problem to us, we are going to solve it.

Problem: a squirrel is pulling stuffing out of patio furniture and upsetting wife. Wife is pissed off and bending my ear about it.
Solution: stop squirrel from stealing stuffing so i can enjoy my beer drinking in peace.

Work Scope: since i have had extensive training in Root Cause Analysis, i decided to approach this issue in the same way you would approach an incident. My belief is that if the problem doesn't go back to a Management System Failure, you have not gone back far enough. I drew it up and decided that if I could not convince the squirrel that pulling the stuffing out of the patio furniture was a deviation from SOP, Standard Operating Procedure, then the position of squirrel would have to be eliminated. The negations failed!!

I made a management decision. The easiest way to solve this problem was to remove the squirrel from the equation. Yes i know it is a Mafia approach, but it works.

Present Day: I am chilling on the front porch enjoying a refrigerated adult beverage when said squirrel makes an appearance. I make my way ever so quietly into the house and open the safe. I grab my .22 LR and load a short into it. I sneak into the front yard and the squirrel in question is chilling out on a limb looking at me. I notice that there are kids playing down the street and decide to wait. Squirrel is sitting there on the limb mocking me. I swear i saw her stick her tongue out at me. I wait. The kids leave and i zero in on her. One Shot, One Kill. I am in city limits.

You hear stories about how for some people time slows down to a crawl in tense situations. Not me. I call it muscle memory. I have shot long distance and bulls eye for so long that i can not remember what i am thinking about 30 seconds before i take the shot. I have no recollection.

The crashing sound of falling squirrel wakes me up. I see her drop right where i had planned. Just like the Lumberjack who knows where the tree will fall, I predicted exactly where the squirrel would fall.

One shot into the head. With the shorts, the bullet will not exit. Perfect Kill.
I walk into the house and proudly announce that the squirrel problem has been eliminated. I show the wife the dead squirrel and she freaks out.

Now from my point of view, her problem is solved. From her point of view i am a Caveman with no refinement. I don't understand. She is bitching me out about animal cruelty and such. I interrupt her and proudly exclaim that it was one bullet and nothing cruel took place. Apparently that was not the appropriate argument to make at the time. I am not sure what i did wrong but apparently a gun is not the answer she was looking for.

In the future she can deal with her own damn squirrel problems.