''After a couple of dry years, we finally had a bumper crop of pecans in our backyard.
''My wife said she would call up our sister-in-law to offer her some.
''I reminded her that they have a pecan tree. She said yes, they did, but the squirrels had decimated the crop, and so we just had to give them some.
''At that point, I reminded her that if you give a man a pecan you feed him for a day, but if you give him a pellet rifle, he can have squirrel gumbo with pecan pie for dessert the rest of his life.''