Fall is hunting season. I'm not a hunter, never have been - unless you include a traumatic childhood episode that still stains my dreams on restless nights.

When I was a boy in Southern California our Little League baseball field was located on semi-wild terrain adjacent to a cliff that dropped precipitously down to the ocean. Foul balls to left field were a big problem for the league and a bonanza for the daring youths who braved the cliffs to retrieve horsehide booty.

Gophers were an even bigger problem: a populous colony had created a network of tunnels that led to cave-ins of the field's surface after rains, and entry/exit holes that led to twisted ankles and the potential for worse.

One breezy spring afternoon when I was about 9, the worst happened at practice: our head coach's son was running for a fly ball, deep in concentration and under a full head of steam. The boy's shoe caught a gopher hole and he flew through the air rather spectacularly only to land on his right wrist with a sickening snap that echoed off the outfield fence and the dugouts with doubtless finality. The boy turned from swaggering sportsman to stricken child, the coach to horrified father in an instant. The verdict: broken wrist, out for the season.

Coach ran our next practice with an uncharacteristic fervency: he barked out orders sharply, hit grounders with more authority than usual, pitched batting practice with extra zip.

After practice he rounded up the lads conspiratorially and said we had to do something for his son, our fallen compatriot, and all of the other boys who had been injured due to the rodents over the years.

"Chuck's injury is the gophers' fault, and I am dead sick of them!," Coach's voice rose to a shout.

He handed everyone a bat, spread us out over the field and told us to position ourselves over gopher holes. He then ran a hose to the mother of all gopher holes, and told us to whack anything that emerged upon his signal.

"Aim for the head, boys," he said grimly, "and do it for Chuck," his son. Mixing public service - avenging injuries past and preventing injuries future, protecting our sacred field of dreams from insidious interlopers - with the tingle of a taboo waived, we glared down at the offending holes.

The coach gave the signal and turned on the hose with a flourish. Furry heads popped up, were attacked, the slaughter commenced: a remarkable display of pre-adolescent blood lust, a lawless time of primordial frenzy.

Disembodied gopher heads flew everywhere like some perverse driving range; blood dripped from our cudgels; our eyes widened and nostrils flared with atavistic killer instinct. We must have looked quite a scene from a safe distance: a mob of pygmies bludgeoning rodents with furious abandon and righteous indignation.