I like squirrels.

I feed the birds and because I feed the birds, I feed the squirrels.

Someone sent me a video of a squirrel-proof feeder. The feeder spins when a squirrel gets on it and flings the bushy tail. In the video, the squirrel went flying through the air with the greatest of unease.

The device was a flinger of squirrels. As I watched the squirrel go where no squirrel had gone before, it reminded me of a catapult. I could hear a knight crying from the walls of a castle, “Gadzooks! They are flinging squirrels at us. All is lost!”

The video caused me to recall a boyhood adventure. Life is an adventure. Not every adventure is a good one.

I grew up on a farm. It was equal parts marsh, woods, and prairie. There was a dearth of hills suitable for winter sledding. The sledding wasn’t much better during the summer. A good sledding hill for us was a cow pie. The cow flop hill worked OK for zooming down on a sled, but a kid couldn’t even get a “Wheee!” out before hitting the bottom. The good thing was that it didn’t take long to walk back up the hill.

We wanted to go sledding because we were more likely to do something than to watch something. We were taken with bobsleds and their Olympic exploits as they zoomed down a course.

Sadly, without a hill, let alone a bobsled course, it was of no use to own a sled. What we did have, for reasons unknown, was a saucer. It was a metal job in a round shape that made it impossible to steer. It was like a sled that you could serve food on.

A friend had an old pickup that could reach a high speed of 63 mph. It might have been 62 or even 64 mph. We couldn’t be sure of the accuracy of the speedometer, but had attempted to verify the speed attained by following it with other vehicles. He hatched the plan.

“We’ll tie the saucer to the bumper of my truck and then pull it down the gravel road. It will be like the Olympics only better.”

We had rope. We always had rope because we had many things that needed roping.

“We’ll use a long rope so that the rider of the saucer will have plenty of time to veer to either side in case I have to make a sudden stop because of a tree in the middle of the road or something.”

I was excited about the prospect of watching this thing take place. There should always be room for cavorting.

“Where would we find anyone dumb enough to sit in that saucer?” I asked.

Everyone looked at me. If we had owned a label maker, my label would have been “chump.”

I had a bad feeling, but I was unable to articulate my objections.

So there I was, sitting in a saucer like Forrest Gump.

The pickup started and began to move slowly because the driver wanted to spare me the whiplash until later.

Down the road we sped. The saucer bounced like a crazed kangaroo, but I had ridden a horse that hated me, so I found hanging onto a circular sled to be no challenge. It was almost fun.

The pickup slowed to execute a turn. I wasn’t worried. I had plenty of rope to play with. The vehicle’s turn was navigated with little bloodshed and I artfully dodged harm. A survivor’s smile spread across my face.

Then a strange thing happened. The truck’s turn was made shorter than it should have been. When it came my time to turn, the saucer went off the road and headed for a signpost. I tried to turn the steering wheel, but there was none. I sighed with relief as I missed the post, but the rope hit the post head-on. It began to wrap around the post like a boa constrictor embracing its favorite prey. I zoomed around the post in my saucer. After several trips around the post, I came to the end of my rope. The saucer stopped moving and flung me a good distance onto a wind-hardened snowbank.

Until that moment, I had been fascinated with flight.

I picked myself up and walked gingerly toward the truck. I could have been angry, but I let it slide. Coach Smith had taught me to walk things off. Even if I were holding a severed limb, he told me to walk it off.

My buddies were laughing at me.

I don’t like the idea of a squirrel-flinging birdfeeder because I have been flung.

Hartland resident Al Batt’s columns appear every Wednesday and Sunday.