Open Season

November is an important month, here in Alberta. November means you are legally allowed to wander around aimlessly with a loaded weapon and take shots at anything that moves. It is open season on Bambi.

That's right, it's hunting season around these parts.

As a city-dweller, I never gave hunting season much thought. Or any thought, for that matter. But living out in the sticks, hunting has taken a whole new meaning.

We wear a lot of orange during this month.

Because you never know when some deranged, great white hunter is going to mistake you, your kids, or your dog for his trophy kill. After all, it must be hard to see clearly through that tiny little scope when your eyes are blood shot and bleary from all the strong coffee one must consume to stay warm.

Don't laugh. My mother-in-law's house has the bullet holes to prove it. Some hunters really can't hit the broad side of a barn. But can manage to miss a bull moose standing four feet in front of them, and instead take out the nearest farm house's window.

Driving down the dirt road, with open fields on either side, is nerve wracking during this particular month, with the mental image of a bullet hole in Grandma's hallway running through your mind. Didn't Dick Cheney shoot a lawyer in the ass when he mistook his backside for a bird? (I know, I know, it wasn't really his backside, it was the man's chest and face, but it's harder to make a joke about that...)

My point is, accidents happen.

The deer and the moose aren't the only things running for cover this month.

I empathise with poor old Bugs. I know how he feels.