Plus Indoor Hunting Adventures

Yesterday, I went squirrel hunting. In my living room.

Ordinarily, this type of activity takes place outdoors and during squirrel season, but this situation was a little different.

I was sitting with Marvin, watching Youtube, when I started hearing banging noises. It sounded like someone was outside vandalizing my air conditioner. I got up and looked, but I couldn’t see any problems. I considered grabbing a rifle.

The noises persisted, and eventually, I realized they were coming from the fireplace. I was not happy about this. A few days earlier, I had seen a fat mouse hop out of the fireplace and run out of the room. I had to put poison and traps out, and before long, the mouse had defiled $40 worth of magnificent beef jerky plus a big bag of rice. I think the mouse is dead now, because he definitely ate the poison, and the Internet says it’s lethal after one feeding. I hope this is true. I haven’t smelled dead mouse yet.

Hearing the noise in the fireplace, I was afraid the mouse’s family was dancing in the flue. I got a light and started poking around, and whenever I jiggled the flue, I heard something big jumping and scampering.

The flue got stuck, and when I applied a little too much force, it opened, and a stinking squirrel landed in the fireplace. I jumped back because I was not eager to be chewed up by a vicious rodent. The squirrel ran into a corner of the fireplace and hid behind my portable light.

I had a problem. There is no way a human being can catch a squirrel. If he had left the fireplace, he would have gone God knows where, and I would have had to share the house with a starving squirrel until he got too weak to hide. By then he probably would have destroyed half of my possessions, and poop would have been everywhere.

I prayed he would stay in place, and I went and got my useless, overpriced pellet rifle. I paid $500 for it, and I have shot it maybe twice. I figured a .22 would damage the fireplace after passing through the squirrel, so the pellet gun was the way to go.

Finding pellets held me up. Then I had to look for goggles in case I had a ricochet. Then the gun refused to cock. I finally got it done. I went to the fireplace, held the gun’s muzzle close to the squirrel, and blasted him. I was hoping to hit the upper body, but it’s not easy to aim a gun at something 8 inches away, especially when you have to work around a plastic light and a big grate.

Sadly, the squirrel did not die immediately. It ran out of the fireplace and into the kitchen. Then it ran to the stairs, started running upstairs, turned around, and went into my bedroom. It ran to the sliding doors, which were closed. Then it went in the bathroom through the east door.

I shut the bedroom door to keep it from going out into the house, I opened the sliding doors, and I went in the bathroom from the west door to see if I could chase the squirrel out. He was not in the bathroom, but I saw a big smear of blood on the floor.

As far as I can determine, he ran out the sliding doors, and I hope he is now dead. The plan was not to make the squirrel suffer. I just wanted him out of my life.

The big lesson I have learned here is that as a former Miamian, I need to learn about fireplace and chimney operation and maintenance. I don’t know how the mouse and squirrel got into the chimney, and I need to keep the flue shut tightly so anything that makes it into the chimney is prevented from entering the house.

I think one problem was that the flue was not closed properly. When it’s really closed, it’s hard to open. It sticks. A rodent could never pry it open. When I started fiddling with it yesterday, it was not closed well. There were little gaps through which I could see into the chimney.

Another problem: filthy creatures are able to enter the chimney from above. I have to go up on the roof and see what the problem is. Surely there is some kind of metal feature designed to keep animals out.

When the flue opened all the way yesterday, dirt and dead bugs fell out. I think maybe rodents have been catching bugs and eating them in the chimney.

I learned some things about rat poison. The one you want is called bromethalin.

Anticoagulants like warfarin (coumadin) have been popular for decades, but rodents develop resistance to them, and they have to eat a lot before the poisons kill them. Bromethalin is better. It’s a nervous system poison, and the rodents die after a single serving. A poisoned mouse may live for a couple of days and pollute your precious beef jerky before he croaks, but he will croak.

Another good thing: bromethalin will not poison predators. If you poison squirrels with it, they will poop it out before dying, so you don’t have to worry about killing hawks and owls that eat their bodies. Disadvantage: it won’t kill feral cats, coyotes, coons, or possums, either.

I have too many squirrels, and shooting them is inefficient. I have mice in my outbuilding. I can put bromethalin bait out and thin the herd, and it will benefit not only me, but all the birds of prey in the vicinity.

I’ll bet you can find a website that says bromethalin kills all sorts of desirable wildlife. That’s leftist nuts for you. They would spin fables about water if they thought it killed vermin.

Maybe I could maintain a bird feeder if I used bromethalin. I could put a poison station beneath it for the squirrels. I don’t think a bird would try to eat it. It comes in huge, hard chunks. Maybe there is a way to do it.

Tomcat is a brand of promethalin baits. You can get it at Home Depot.

In other news, the tribulation really does seem to be rumbling to life. It appears to be manifesting in the weather. Europe has been having crazy floods. I think I wrote about the European problems. Germans have been dying. Germans! When you read that it rained in India and a hundred or a thousand people died, it’s not surprising, because India is a backward country full of people who lack common sense. The Germans are different. They’re sharp, and they are very responsible. In order for a flood to kill Germans, it has to be truly exceptional.

China has had floods. Dams have burst.

It’s funny how people who dislike God seem to pick up on the approach of the end. Far-left extremist Maureen Dowd just published a column about the floods, entitled Apocalypse Right Now. Unfortunately, she sees the floods as proof conservatives cause all the world’s problems. She says the flooding was caused by global warming.

There is a huge problem with that argument, and it’s pretty obvious. Global warming is a slow process. It can’t happen in one year, between 2020 and 2021. If the globe is warming, and if it causes flooding in Europe, then we would have seen floods for a number of years. The floods wouldn’t just leap out and surprise us. There is no gradual trend of increased flooding in Europe. Had there been, Europeans would have been ready this year instead of getting caught totally unprepared.

Leftists love to point to any example of bad weather and blame capitalism. They did it after the active hurricane season of 2005. After that, we had a bunch of very quiet years. Where did global warming’s hurricane-stimulating effects go during those years? Same place the left’s hysterical claims went. They shut up when the evidence turned against them. They only listen to “the science” when it agrees with their economic and social justice theories.

When conservatives say cold weather proves global warming doesn’t exist, leftists love to say, “Weather isn’t climate.” This means “weather” describes short-term events, whereas “climate” describes conditions that change very slowly over many years. Maureen Dowd is doing exactly what leftists accuse us of doing. Europe had one rainy summer, and she says it proves her view of the climate, which just happens to go hand-in-hand with environmental extremism, the destruction of industry, redistribution of wealth from responsible countries to chaotic ones, and socialism, is correct.

The evidence for climate change is not good, and the evidence that mankind causes it is even worse, but that doesn’t prevent leftists from latching onto sporadic weather events and trying to use them to prove Karl Marx was right. Marx is their messiah. Christians do the same thing. We look at the world and try to prove events prove Jesus is God, and sometimes we go too far. One big difference, however, is that many of our efforts are supported by prophecy.

Dowd’s irrational, facile column is evidence the tribulation may be near. Prophecy says God will release a spirit of murder into the world. Dowd is intolerant and irrational. She sees “them” (us) as the source of humanity’s problems, much as the Nazis saw the Jews, Gypsies, and Communists as wellsprings of humanity’s ills. Dehumanizing and demonizing other groups is the foundation of genocide, which is the purpose of the spirit God will release. You can’t have genocide until you make one group of people think of other groups as disposable, subhuman vermin.

I can provide a parallel. It would have been pretty hard to get me to embark on a squirrel genocide program, had experience not taught me they were bona fide pests with nearly no redeeming functions. These days, I find killing a squirrel rewarding, even if I’m put off by their suffering. Killing them is necessary and righteous, like killing roaches. I would be thrilled if grey squirrels went extinct this afternoon.

We’re seeing the spirit of murder in the left’s reaction to people who resist masks and vaccines. They often say they’re the reason coronavirus hasn’t been wiped out. They say they’re killing people, equating them with murderers. They’re taking steps to prevent resistors from buying, selling, traveling, speaking, and doing business. It’s very much like what the spirit of Antichrist did to the Jews of Europe. They were excluded from many jobs. They lost the right to disseminate their opinions, even by carrier pigeons, which they were forbidden to own. Eventually, they were segregated, concentrated, and exterminated, and the Nazis did this because they thought a day would come when they could say, “Finally, our problems are over.”

Of course, people who resist masks and vaccines are proxies for conservatives and Christians.

Conservatives and Christians generally don’t use carrier pigeons, but maybe we should start buying them, along with CB’s and ham radios. We are being tossed off the Internet every day.

If you listen to enraged leftists these days, you can sense that they feel like the Nazis did. They want to make us as though we did not exist. They want us to have no power of any kind. It’s not just obscure tweeters and commenters. Keith Olbermann, who had a popular television shows on popular networks, said Trump supporters should be arrested and prosecuted, and the mainstream left was fine with it. He called us “maggots,” which is exactly what Castro’s supporters called the innocent people they beat, robbed, enslaved, jailed, tortured, deported, and murdered in Cuba.

On the right, there appears to be a rising tide of kooky voices calling for civil war and blaming minorities for most of our ills. They are far fewer in number than leftist nuts, who have been dominant in leftist culture for a long time, but they’re here. These people also serve the Antichrist. Jesus never called for us to buy rifles and shoot our way out of our problems. He told the disciples to buy swords for the defense of individuals, but he never suggested organized armed resistance.

Over the last year, we have seen lack, disease, and hatred, which are symptoms of the arrival of the three horsemen. We have seen signs in the heavens. We haven’t seen earthquakes, which Jesus predicted, yet. Some Christians say earthquake activity has suddenly increased, but it isn’t true. Maybe we should consider increased activity a crucial sign. It would be easy to spot, and it would be unique in mankind’s history. We have had wars, plagues, and shortages ever since the world was created, but we haven’t had global outbreaks of earthquakes.

I keep feeling like I’m just waiting to leave. I can’t make myself feel that life will return to normal. I keep feeling that none of the earthly things I do are important. It’s as though I were in a burning building, waiting to be rescued, and I no longer needed to think about mopping floors or fixing plumbing leaks.

A guy I like to watch just put up a Youtube video about a dream a friend of his had. I watched, and at first, I wasn’t sure what to think. Then suddenly I felt I knew what the dream meant.

The friend dreamed a group of people were in a building, and they were high up, looking toward a city which resembled London. The city was being destroyed by an earthquake. As they watched, their own building moved toward the city.

A man showed up to lead people out of the building. Some followed. He took them up on a high ridge where there was snow and ice, and they walked toward a destination. The building went over a waterfall, into an abyss.

A similar ridge appeared nearby, and a woman was seen on the ridge, trying to take a quicker route to the same destination. She fell off and went into the abyss.

A man appeared via a flight of stairs. He climbed up to the first ridge and joined the rescued people. He said he had come from hell.

They learned their destination was Zion, the city of God.

I’ll tell you what I think God told me.

The city that resembled London was the carnal world. The isolated building was the location of the church. The destruction of London was the tribulation.

People who stayed in the building were carnal Christians. They kept their eyes on the carnal world, so they were sucked down with it. They were like people who live on social media sites; like Lot’s wife. She was still part of Sodom, so she stared at it with yearning, and she shared its fate.

The Christians who left were people who listen to the Holy Spirit and reject the Antichrist’s world. The man who led them was an evangelist. The ridge was Jesus. It was Jacob’s ladder, which is Jesus. A ladder is a type of stairway, and it’s a type of path, and Amos 9:6 says God builds his steps in the sky.

Jesus is a path. He called himself “the way” or “the road,” using the same word the Greeks use on street signs. The path is narrow. It’s easy to fall off, just as it’s easy to fall off a ridge. When you fall off a ridge, there is no way to go but down. It’s the same with Jesus. There are no lateral or upward moves.

The second ridge is an alternative route preferred by human beings. Any path but Jesus leads to hell. You can’t design your own Jesus. You can’t insist on a god who loves homosexuality, selfishness, and pride. The woman represents people who try to save themselves through the false messiahs of idolatry, including worship of self, man, and government. She’s a woman because women are the first to lead us into idolatry. Think of Eve, Jezebel, and Solomon’s wives. Men are supposed to lead, and the human race is supposed to be God’s submissive wife.

The man who came up from hell is a person who received salvation during the tribulation. Missing the rapture doesn’t condemn you to hell. You can still be saved, but you will wish you had listened sooner.

Zion is the new Jerusalem. It’s where the saved will go. It’s described in the Revelation.

This is what came to me, and I think it’s right.

I would love to say I hope I’m wrong, but I would only say that to comfort other people. I hope the rapture is close. This place is just too messed up to continue.

I used to tell God I was ready to go, but I wanted him to look after my dad and my pets. Then my dad died. Then one of my pets died. Marvin is okay; I hope God will take him along with the chosen. There seems to be no good reason to leave him here.

I used to feel bad because I might leave the earth unmarried. I felt a little cheated. I wanted to have the love of an attractive woman, chosen by God, before the end, and the pool of women who seemed available at my age looked more like a punishment than a reward. I’m just being honest.

I met a wonderful lady, much younger and more attractive than I had any reason to expect. We spent time together in Egypt. We did’t cross the line, but we shared love and deep affection. Then we married after we parted. Even if God harvests his crop before we get together again in person, I am content.

I have hope we will come back after the marriage of the lamb. The Bible suggests the raptured (not the resurrected) will return after Satan is imprisoned, to enjoy long lives on a blessed earth. That would be nice, but I will be thrilled to be anywhere where I don’t have to live amid curses, evil spirits, and toxic people.