I do not like to do it, but I have poisoned the possums. And still they come. I do not like to do it, but I have set traps for the possums. And still they come. There must be thousands in the bush around here. One year I spread nets around the best of my trees to enmesh the possums’ claws and dissuade them. The possums laughed so hard they kept me awake at nights.
Get a gun, said Pete the Wise.
A gun?
A gun.
Oh. I last owned a gun at the age of 6. All of us boys had guns at the age of 6. Our loving and peaceable parents gave them to us. At the same time they gave our sisters dolls.
I remember a revolver with a holster, and a double-barrelled beast that fired a feeble cork. And there was a cap gun where the hammer came down on a tiny explosive charge and sometimes it went off.
Having guns didn’t make us violent. We were inherently violent. We fought with each other all the time. Guns were just a different way of doing it. If we hadn’t had guns we’d have pointed our fingers. "Bang bang, you’re dead," was the phrase. "Bang bang, you’re dead."
It’s the expression of a growing sense of self. Look out, it says, there’s a new cub on the sierra.
Guns are magic weapons. You don’t see the bullet. It’s like thought transference. You pick a distant target and think it dead with a squeeze of the finger. Guns are wish fulfillers. They drastically extend your sphere of influence.
They also spare you the gruesome truth. To kill someone with axe or sword or knife is to smell their breath and know their sapid reality and to spill their blood and have it sticky on your hands. With a gun it’s just atishoo atishoo they all fall down.
Guns make murder scenic, which is why Hollywood loves them. John Wayne shot a thousand Red Indians. If he’d had to stab them he’d never have been a hero. Stabbed, the Indians would have gushed blood and screamed and earned sympathy. Shot, they were no more than fairground targets, picked off, bagged. You saw no wounds even.
(In contrast, the Indians shot their victims with barbaric protruding arrows. And given the chance they scalped the newly dead. Ah, the nostalgia of propaganda.)
We boys grew out of toy guns quickly. But we didn’t grow out of violence. We just channelled it into sport. Physical creatures boys, and fond of conflict.
At secondary school they gave us a taste of guns for real. On Friday afternoons in the fourth and fifth forms we put on uniforms and played at soldiers, so we’d be ready when the Russians came. We lay on mats in the indoor range and fired .22 bullets at paper targets. The novelty soon wore off.
303s had a kick like a small horse. For them we went to an outdoor range and were taught to lie with our legs splayed and our toes dug in. Next to me was a skinny child called Philip Dodds. After six rounds he’d retreated a metre. His toes had carved furrows.
Twice I went shooting with my elder brother. He got rabbits and the occasional pigeon. I aimed at a chaffinch, not expecting to hit it. When it tumbled from the twig, I felt a momentary thrill. I went to fetch the tiny corpse, stroked its pretty feathers and felt only guilt. I haven’t fired a gun since.
Would I need a licence?
Pete the Wise shook his head. He said there were air guns now that would kill a possum at 30 metres. I’d need a scope, a headlamp, patience and sobriety.
I pictured myself camped out on my deck, the rifle ready and loaded, the gleam of eyes in the apple tree, the barrel raised, the shot fired, the beast falling like a stone, or maimed and screaming, or missed and the slug sailing off over Lyttelton.
"I can buy apples in the supermarket," I said.
- Joe Bennett is a Lyttelton writer.
