Kill an animal with my bare hands, not on your life.

Travis' most recent post was about a woman strangling a rabid raccoon to death with her bare hands. If you've kept up with our Manly Men of Mankind club, most of the members have strangled a small attacking fur-bearing creature in order to be inducted into this club.

We've made fun of it a few times and in the last post Travis posed the question of whether or not I would kill a small animal with my bare hands.

My answer is no I would not and here is why.

I was lucky enough in my life that I was taught how to use a gun at a very early age. I've said this many times, I had a gun blow up in my face at age 5, so a gun finds a happy home within my grasp. This is one of the perks of growing up in the country. If you think there are a lot of guns in the inner city, you should come out here to the real OC.

That being said, having been raised in such an environment it would be no surprise to you or anyone else that, like Barry Gibb, I'm never more than 5 seconds from a gun at any point when being attacked by a rabid varmint is possible.

So, should any animal short of a African buffalo come my way, I can find the appropriate firearm in which to take it down. Big bore and small caliber rifles, shotguns, take your pick.

Therefore, the probability of me having to kill an animal with my bare hands is very slim.

However, should I ever be put into a position where I must defend mine or someone else's honor against a rabid varmint sans firearm, it still would never make it to the point where I would have to use my bare hands.

You see, in our youth, mine and Piccu's mother would deliver corporal punishment with whatever she could get her hands on. Magazines, fly swatters, yard sticks, tree branches, brooms, toilet brushes, whatever. She was the thinking man's disciplinarian. Anything was a weapon and she could wield them with the skill and precision of a samurai warrior.

Besides, when you have your hands around the neck of a raccoon or any similar-sized animal, why don't you just punt the thing like a football? It's not like it's going to come back after you after having been punted 30 feet.

Are you actively seeking out these stories, Travis?

Let's also make note that all of the people that had to kill these animals with their bare hands are the same people that would never put themselves into a position where the animal would attack them. They'd run like scared little girls and I am including myself in that group.

But in all of these cases they had to come to the rescue of other people who didn't have enough sense to run away like scared little girls. So if people would leave wild animals alone, we've never have to ask ourselves if we'd strangle a squirrel to death.