My first gun! Red Ryder special. The goal: go forth and kill something. I was 9 or 10 and out for blood. The most common living things in our woods were Cat Birds. Now, Cat Birds are related to the Mockingbird and have similar song patterns. They sing their little hearts out. But sometimes they make a whining cat-meowing annoying sound. My rule: Leave them alone when singing, shoot them when mewing. So over the course of a few days 4 or 5 fell to the mighty hunter. Then, a small woodpecker caught my attention: stalk, aim, shoot, HIT. I walked over to pick up the bird but it wasn’t dead. In my hand, it looked at me with that one-eyed look birds give you and the bottom fell out. I felt sick, sorry and terribly wrong. The woodpecker said (not in words, but emotion) “What have you done? Do you have any idea what you have done?” in my brain, and then died. I can’t really explain it, but except for one other series of shameful behavior (I may confess this later), I never killed another bird for “fun”. Woodpecker spoke loud and clear. And I heard loud and clear.
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