while cleaning the garage, I found a homemade crossbow. neat. it had a trigger, so once it was wound up you aimed it as a rifle and then pulled the trigger. I put it on the mantle. I had some notion of giving it to a younger male relative.

days later, we were cleaning and found a pigeon feather. I asked Karine if I could glue it to the crossbow. she said sure. I put the feather on a paper towel, and put glue in three places. I went to the crossbow and started looking for where it would fit and be aesthetically pleasing. that led to my examining it more closely. I held it like to crank it, and then to fire; it seemed there was nowhere on it a feather would fit that would not look stupid, or get crushed.

the crossbow had a pistol grip. I hadn't thought much about it but when trying out holding it I realized, that there was no reason for the pistol grip. you never held it there to fire the crossbow... wait. I looked again. there were two triggers, too.

I suddenly realized the pistol grip was offcenter, and to the right of the main crossbow stock, about 4" back from the end of it, a muzzle stuck out. I reaced it and it looked like a cheap air gun was there as well. further inspection led to my finding the magazine. there was a .017 pellet in there.

I told Karine, and said I thought there was onein the chamber too; I was going out back to fire it. Karine rolled here eyes. I went in the backyard and an asian lady who lived in an adjoining house called over the fence to talk to Karine. she came out and they were gossiping. this made it hard for me to figure out where to discharge the air gun. actually I couldn't tell how to pump it up with air. I started examining it again.

Karine invited the naighbour over. a bunch of people started coming, leading me to dismay. I found the pump and pumped up the air gun. while I was talking to someone he noticed that it wasn't just a crossbow and was very displeased I had inadvertently pointed it at him. Alex P from my work was also there. I was worried about Bohdan but Karine put him on a chain. he was rubbing his face on Alex P's head.

I found how to pull the gun out of the crossbow. when I did it turned out to be fluorescent yellow like a water toy. I pointed it at our ain barrel and fired. there was no pellet in the chamber after all, but then there was a high-pitched whine and a rumble, and the rain barrel fell open like part of the side was a door. then up from the ground under the rain barrel was a small armoured vehicle which was also fluorescent yellow. the sound was familiar and made me think of Star Wars. that's what woke me up.