Annie Oakley


Yesterday I got shooting lessons all morning long. There's been a bit too much excitement around our house lately. Someone is being stalked, and it's not me. Saturday before last my owner intervened in a 'bit of a domestic spat', which our neighbors from two houses down the road were having in our front yard. She was naked, save for a black pair of panties, and screaming her head off as the fellow knocked her down and started dragging her kicking and screaming back to his house. This did not go over well with my owner, and he bolted out the door barefoot with a pistol bellowing "Put her down now!"

She got put down, but only after he fired a warning shot. It was a nervous and tense stand off that followed for thirty-eight minutes until police arrived. I had to call them three times because it was taking so long I was not sure they were bothering to come. I watched and tried to listen from the front door, but I couldn't see much because there were bushes in the way and I could hear, but I couldn't quite understand what was being said from the distance. My hearing is really going down hill fast, I think.

What I didn't hear were in order "I'm going to kill you if you come any closer." Said as my owner came closer. "I'm going to kill you if you call the cops." Said right before my owner yelled back at the top of his lungs "Delia, call the police now!" Then just "I'm going to fucking kill you," as the fellow dove into the bushes by the road and ran like Hell finally as the police car came into sight.

The fellow is a new neighbor. His mother has lived down the road ever since we have lived here. He has lived mostly in prison, on the other hand, and has just rejoined polite society after his second term for felony burglary.

The fellow's girl friend lives next door to him. I think she's still in high school. I don't know her name. She didn't press charges against him, and the police didn't arrest the fellow, or even look hard enough to find him, given that she didn't want to press charges.

He remains at large.

The day it happened, not an hour after it happened, our neighbor Will called me to say that the guy had just called his grandson, who's the same age as the guy and school buddies with him, to ask if his grandson had found any bullets for a gun the guy had. First, the guy is a convicted felon, which means shouldn't be in possession of a firearm. Second, he didn't even know what kind of gun that he had the week before as he tried to 'borrow' some bullets for it from Will, so I am pretty sure that adds up to he just stole it from someone.

Will's grandson was not inclined to help with that plan, and called Will to let us know what the guy said. It apparently took the guy a week to finally get the bullets for that gun. Last Saturday he was target practicing from his yard, and shooting at a target across the road. That in itself is illegal. You're are not supposed to fire a gun across a roadway or from one. It's unsafe.

The next night, Sunday night, but past midnight so it was really Monday morning, the fellow with two other unknown people, one of which was female and probably his girlfriend, roared into our driveway in an old light blue car with one door that was a much darker blue color. It looked like some 70's model Buick and had no muffler from the sound of it. It had been so loud in fact that my owner had already gone outside to see what the noise was long before it ever came around the curve in the road and into our driveway.

They didn't see him to realize he was already outside and patiently waiting for them to do something really, really stupid before he did anything himself. They proceeded to make so much noise it woke the whole neighborhood up trying to get him to come out of the house. The revved the engine. They cut a half donut in the driveway pulling back out onto the road. They drove up and down the stretch of road in front of our house squealing their tires, screaming, and honking their horn. They stooped the car just out of sight around the curve and then there was loud shouting between the fellow and the girl like they were having a fight. I could hear the yelling, but couldn't understand what was being yelled. I could also hear someone else was still in the car, revving the engine, while they were outside the car yelling, which is how I know there were at least three people involved.

It went on for about a half an hour. It was scary. It was, legally, disturbing the peace, and pointless to call the police. They would have driven off. They never got into plain sight to say positively who was in the car, though there was only one possibility for who was in the car and behind it. They didn't put the first toe in our yard, though they did put tires in our drive way briefly.

The whole thing just reeked of set up. I imagine if he had come out the front door then and towards them, there would have been an attempt to make good the previous threats made.

I got a two hour nap finally that morning, but my owner didn't sleep, staying up to make sure they didn't come back. After the sun came up, he finally took a short nap on the couch, and I woke him up when his mother arrived like he asked me to. Then Matt got there, and while his mom stayed with me, he and Matt went shopping. They didn't get back until after ten o'clock at night, having had to go all over the place to find what they were looking for, a practical shotgun suitable for home defence.

My owner has been an avid shooter all his life, but never been one for hunting much. The only shotgun he had was an over and under for skeet shooting. It nor anything else in his collection was really suitable as a defensive weapon, not after dark, at least.

I know he went thinking about a Benelli Black Eagle, which he's wanted for some time because it's the only left-handed semi-automatic shotgun made. My owner is a left-handed shooter, though he's not left handed. It's an eye thing. He drove to his favorite gun shop to find out they couldn't order a Benelli for him, not being a Benelli dealer, then drove on to the closest Benelli dealer knowing who it was after that. He decided not to get the Benelli, though, saying "I'd feel really bad if I had to club anyone with a $1200 gun." Meaning there are guns to use, and then there are guns to coddle and clean after you use them.

He picked a cheap, well used 12ga Mossberg 590DA pump, which is standard police issue practicality. The previous owner had added sling mounts and a spare shell holder on the side, too. It holds nine shells with six spares on the side. It looks like it would make a great club, too.

The next morning was when I got the shooting lessons. I grew up in town and was never taught as a matter of course how to shoot anything. I've fired his rifles a time or two before when he took me with him to target practice, but never had serious lessons or fired a big, intimidating shotgun before.

He started with lessons on how to load it, which was the easy part. That wasn't hard at all, much to my relief, because when he tried to show me how to use one of his pistols, a semi-automatic with clips, he gave up and said he'd trade one of his guns he didn't like much for a revolver for me. I couldn't pull back the slide on his pistol to chamber a round after first struggling to load the clip. The shotgun was a breeze to load, and I liked the cha-chunk of the pump action.

Then it was time to shoot it. It was still big and scary looking, though. I was afraid it was going to hit me in the head from the recoil when I shot it, and I fired the first shot with much trepidation and my eyes closed. I didn't get any where near the coffee can fifteen feet away with that one, but wasn't scared of the recoil after that. It wasn't very bad, much less than his skeet shotgun. We didn't have enough 12ga shells to spare the amount of practice aiming I needed, so he got out his good shotgun for that, since he's got cases of shells for it. That one hurt to shoot, even though it didn't look nearly as intimidating. It's only a 20ga, too, with much smaller shells. It just weights much less, only 6.3 pounds fully loaded with all two shells compared to over ten pounds loaded with the Mossberg. Bigger is better not to have a sore shoulder, I learned, and made no more complaints about how heavy the thing was after firing the Citori. I had to ask could we please switch back to the big one.

About twenty more shots later I finally hit the can and finally got a rudimentary understanding of aiming, very rudimentary. I grinned and giddily said, "I bet I can do it again," then proceeded to miss it entirely. It took another whole box of shells before I was hitting it consistently at only fifteen feet away. There is a lot more skill involved in aiming than I had ever thought.

I'll be practicing more. I had a ball shooting all morning. My arm feels like I was lifting weights now, though. It's a little sore and stiff this morning. I'm competent to shoot at this point, just not really to aim, but that doesn't make me feel much better about the guy stalking about with harm on his mind now.

It's far, far too much excitement for me. I really don't lead an exciting life from my point of view, and I really like to keep it that way without having to worry about stuff like that. Stuff like that is very distracting.