No one has ever accused me of having a green thumb.  In fact, even though I would love to have an award winning garden, and have a library shelf full of gardening books, some of which I have actually read, a lush productive garden has always been a dream for me.   One success I did taste, or rather, attempt to taste, came after about three years of cultivation, rock removing, and manure
hauling.
     My cantaloupes were next to perfection.  The vines were lush and green.  The immature fruit promised a tasty treat in a few weeks.  I eagerly anticipated the taste of fresh, vine ripened, sweet-smelling, juicy, cantaloupe.   My mind had breakfast planned weeks in advance.  I would cut the ripe, sweet fruit in half, scoop out center leaving a bowl which I would then fill with ripe strawberries or peaches.   Mornings I would awake drooling with anticipation.
     Finally they were nearing perfection.  One warm afternoon as I bent to the ground and gently held one of my prizes between my hands I could smell the aroma that signified ripeness.   In the morning I would venture out and pick a cool, sweet, delight.
     The next morning I rushed to the garden to pick my melon.  Horror met me in the form of a large irregular hole deep into my prize.  This melon was now only fit for the compost pile.  Furious would be mild to describe my state.   As if that wasn't enough, this scene repeated itself for about three of the next four mornings.  I vowed to discover the culprit and dispatch it to whatever heaven or
hell awaited its kind.
     I set a chair a ways up the hill from the garden in a spot that not only provided me cover, but provided a view of my garden and the surrounding area.   The next morning I dragged myself out of bed long before dawn and sat in the morning light awaiting my adversary with my only firearm, a Sheridan pump-up pellet gun, resting in my lap.   What seemed like several hours passed when I was awarded with the first sight of the enemy.
     It was so fat it resembled just a big hair ball sliding along the ground.   This surely was the villain who had been enjoying my sweet juicy cantaloupes.  Furiously pumping the pellet gun I charged down the hill with all the energy of the deranged, shooting, reloading, and pumping all the way.   Chasing the varmint all the way to his hole, I must have pumped at least six pellets into that fat, ugly,
critter.  All it did was turn and glance at me as it slid down it’s hole.   By now, anyone watching surely would have thought me to be insane, but I wasn't through.
        I now knew where he lived.  It was a mound of dirt and brush left from the pond I had recently scooped out.   Pushing some of the brush aside I uncovered his hole.   Knowing that ground hogs often have a back entrance, I spent considerable time searching the ground on the other side of the mound.   When I finally found what appeared to be his back door I fetched a large rock and
dropped it over the exit.  Then, snickering, I went to the house.  Telling my wife only that I was going to settle a score with a ground hog, I picked up the box of kitchen matches we used to light our wood stove.   Then I went to the garage where I retrieved a five gallon can of gasoline.  It was full.  Good!  Sprinting to the mound and the home of the ground hog I could smell victory.   Down the hole went most of the gasoline, with a bit used to create a trail away from the hole.  The match was lit.  The flame rapidly traveled the trail to the hole.  The sound I heard was simply a highly muffled whoom, as the top of the mound actually lifted a few inches and flames shot a few feet out of the hole.  Surely I was victorious!  Imagine my surprise when out of the hole staggered the ground hog, looking something like a scene from a cartoon, smoke rising from it’s fur.  After just a few
steps it rolled over on it’s side.
     The next morning I enjoyed a fragrant, luscious, melon, the center heaped with strawberries and peaches.   I also went shopping for a real gun.