Is it bad to shoot a squirrel with a bb gun?

[Royal Ass.]

I put up a bird feeder the other day on the tree in my back yard. Today I noticed this squirrel hijacking the thing and scaring all the birds off. he was on it for a really long time just gorging himself. I got pissed off and opened my backdoor and starting taking pot shots at him with one of those really low powered $15 walmart Crossman spring firing bb guns.

Eventually I hit the squirrel. I think it hit him in the head. THe gun is way too weak to kill it. I don't think it really hurt the squirrel in any perminant manner. After he got hit he ran up the tree and dissapeared. I was trying ot instil some negative reinforcment so that he would associate eating out of my bird feeder with being hit by a bb.

Anyway, after I hit the little guy I started feeling bad abou it. Did I do the right thing? Did I have just cause to shoot the squirl? It's not like he was doing anything inherantly bad for a squirrel....

ps. now that the squirell is off the feeder, the birds are enjoying it again.

[l0qii]

I prefer using a Super Soaker for such things. It's a lot funnier, you don't have to buy ammo, and you don't riddle the earth with metal pellets.

[me-and_we]

Hmm, there's the same problem at the house of my parents in Munich, but I dunno, I'd never hit an animal with any weapon only to drive it away... At our house they are still very shy so we just go outside and they flee...

This year we had big problems with squirrels as it was a very warm winter, but then we decided to give them sort of their own feeding place and placed some nuts on a wooden plate next to a tree in our garden, so everybody was happy again...

[bigfatkitty]

You should shoot it with something that will kill it. And then you should eat it.

[Mr. Nightmare]

Once I was camping and I saw a chipmunk about 10 yards from me in the path I was walking on. I picked up a rock and tossed it toward the chipmunk, to scare it off. Unfortunately, my aim was too good, and I hit the little dude right between the eyes. It wasn't a big rock, but he wasn't a big animal. It started convulsing and going into body spasms, and I had to break its neck to put it out of its misery.

Damn, that was a great toss, though.

[Tha_Gunslinga]

You put food out, and the squirrel eats it. So you punish the squirrel. How is this fair exactly?

[dry cereal]

squirells are vile plague infested self-serving vermin. I also think making nonsentient being feel annoyance is extremely funny.

[Tha_Gunslinga]

humans are vile plague infested self-serving vermin.

Fixt

[Giediprime41]

We use to shoot them all the time when i was young in Maine.
But in Maine there's never anything to do but kill small things with large guns.