Dunno if I ever shared this critter story back in the day, but I was reminded of it over the weekend when I told it to my wife (she was horrified that I found it morbidly funny and almost immediately questioned marrying me). Anyways, here goes...
Disclaimer: I'm really not a cruel sonofabitch. I only killed all those varmints out of necessity. Outside of shooting skunks on general principle (which I'm sure we can all agree with), I only shot the others cause the little bastards loved to chew holes in my batting cage net -- and that is a bridge too far. Their life vs my net is not really hard calculus.
Early one evening after the sun went down I was scanning the area for prey and saw a fat little Petey Cottontail hippity-hopping towards the net. Sorry Pete, but you're gonna die. BAM!!! A screaming 17 grain .17 HMR bullet blows right through his nylon-chewin'/pecker-suckin' heart.*
I went inside for a minute and while I can't remember exactly what happened next, I'm sure it prolly involved Mountain Dews and various forms of chocolate. About 15-20 minutes later, I return to the back porch. As I look through the scope (had a decent scope and a high-powered flashlight mounted), I was shocked to see the rabbit wasn't there any more! Now I knew there was zero chance he survived that shot (that .17 simply obliterates small game), but I had no idea what happened to the carcass. As I swung my rig around, lo and behold I saw it -- a squinty-eyed possum had evidently dragged the body to the middle of a nearby brush pile and was chowing down on fresh rabbit LMAO. That little ********** was in hog heaven! I watched through the scope for a few moments as his sharp little claws dug furiously into the body. Then he buried his face deep inside and got a big bite of meat and entrails. Finally he raised his demonic, bloody little head in ecstasy and started gulping it down. Of course his pea-brain had no idea he was actually on death row and eating his last meal...an instant later his head became a pink mist.
Now for some weird, morbid reason that I can't explain (other than the well-established fact that I'm an insensitive **********), it made me laugh to think about that possum's fate. Not exactly in a knee-slapping HAHAHA kind of way, but yet if I'm being completely honest I must admit I did find some twisted kind of humor in the situation. Possums suck. They're creepy, snarling, disease-ridden, trouble-making, prehensile-tailed ******** and the less of them the better. I guess maybe it was the look on his face as he was eating the rabbit. He was having the time of his life. It almost looked like he was smiling, as if he were...wait for it...grinning like a possum. Then pfffft, lights out. Karl Spackler would have been proud.