A friend posted a picture on my Facebook the that brought back a great memory. It was a photo of a handgun pointed at a spider on the wall with the caption:
“I tried a shoe first but when the spider threw my shoe back at me this was my only option.”

When I was a young bachelor I lived in a one room cabin in the middle of nowhere in a town named Timber (pop. 63). My teensy abode was one of four cabins on a piece of property that used to be a church camp. The Nehalem river formed one mile of our northern border, the county road was half that for our southern frontier, west was ‘town’ and east was wilderness. Secluded is an understatement.
I enjoyed near impenetrable privacy with a measure of peace and quiet that bordered on the absurd. Until one night…
An army buddy came by one afternoon. We started out shooting the shit then started shooting at shit and, of course, ended up drinking all sorts of shit. He brought up his motorized log splitter for me to use in laying up my winter fuel stock. While we were sitting there contemplating work I said, “Hey! I’ll bet I can split that log with a 12 gauge slug!” He agreed that probably I was correct but we should do some empirical research just to be sure. I broke out the old Winchester and a box of Remington 1 ounce slugs. After 5 rounds we confirmed our suspicions and concluded that the scientific method was our friend. As scientists typically do, we headed off to the general store for some Boone’s Farm and Mad Dog. We came back to the cabin, had a few drinks, grilled up some elk steaks, had another drink, had a smoke, had some more drinks, and ended up putting nearly anything you can imagine into that hydraulic log splitter. You wouldn’t believe what amazing machines they are…
After a few more drinks he had to go home. I tottered up the steps, went inside, and flopped down on the bed where I immediately fell asleep. For about 5 minutes.
I woke up to a scratching sound. It sounded like it was in my brain. While possible it didn’t seem probable so I opened my eyes and looked at the wall to my right. There, 8 inches from the tip of my snout, was where the scratching was coming from. It seemed that a mouse or other member of the family rodentiae had found his furry little way into my wall in what he must have figured to be a perfect rent-free arrangement. I banged on the wall with my balled fist telling him I was in no mood for his crap and that I needed some sleep. It worked. My little plague carrying tenant got the message, tucked his nose in his groin and went to sleep. For about 5 minutes. I repeated my cease and desist ministrations three or four times in the next half hour but he just couldn’t knock it off…
It seemed to me that it might be a good idea to take up my .22 rifle and install a new hole in the wall with it. So I closed one eye, walked (I use that term loosely) across the room, and got my rifle. I put a few pills in it, brought it to bear on my barricaded nemesis, and let fly. Whaddya know? It worked! Satisfied with my handiwork I once again laid down and ended up sleeping through the night. A week passes.
There’s a bit of a stink coming from the holes. Duct tape! Worked like a charm. Another week passes.
I figured I’d best do it right this time. I took up some tools and jumped in. I tore off the shingles, which served as siding, from a 4 square foot area of the wall. I had a circular saw but only one blade and I didn’t want to wreck it. I thought of borrowing a saw from a neighbor but didn’t want to have to explain what I was doing with it… Then I realized I had a saw with plenty of spare blades: My chainsaw!
I fired her up and with just a deft cuts I had that wall open right quick. I fully expected to find a well perforated bucktoothed wall dweller in there. What I found instead was a fully intact mouse whose only problem was that he seemed to have forgotten how to breathe. As close as I could tell, I scared him to death.
After a little caveman carpentry I had the wall back together good enough so the landlord wouldn’t be able to figure out what kind of shenanigans has transpired without a briar pipe and a magnifying glass. Plain white Colgate toothpaste makes a fine and dandy field expedient wallboard patching compound. Write that down, it might help you out sometime.
I set up a tripod and filmed the entire extraction process with my old VHS-C video camera. I’ll poke around in the next month and see if I can’t find it and pull some screen caps…