Once and Only Once...
I grew up in the country. The town has changed since my tenure there, with developments springing up, but there remains a certain charm about the place, a certain 'awayness' that has not deminished from when I was a little girl.
Growing up as I did, it was not uncommon for folks to hunt or to have guns in the house, and having an older brother who was interested in the sport, there was always a bb gun around. Only once did I ever use it without anyone's knowledge. I can't remember exactly how old I was, but I would guess that I was at least 10. I actually can't even remember exactly where I was when I did shoot it, but I remember my target.
In order to see exactly what would happen, I decided that I would have to aim it at a live animal. As I have always loved many mammals, I could not think of harming a bunny or a cat or dog, that would be entirely too cruel. What we always did have plenty of in the yard was birds. We had a bird bath and at any given time, at least 3 bird feeders and lots of birdseed spread under a tree. I decided that in order to test my Annie Oakley skills, I would try to hit one of the many songbirds in our yard. Sure enough, I only needed one attempt: I nailed one right on the first try.
I was entirely frightened by my own actions, that I had caused another living thing such pain. It fluttered and spun around on the ground and I was too ashamed of what I had done to even do the decent thing and shoot it again to put it out of its misery. I just ran back inside the house and returned the bb gun to the place I had found it and never felt the need to try that experiment ever again. I put it out of my mind as quickly as it had happened.
Perhaps a shot from a bb gun is not enough to harm a little song bird permanently. It's tough to say since I left the scene so quickly. But I sure hope that it flew away to tend to the wound. And I obviously do still think about it from time to time...
Growing up as I did, it was not uncommon for folks to hunt or to have guns in the house, and having an older brother who was interested in the sport, there was always a bb gun around. Only once did I ever use it without anyone's knowledge. I can't remember exactly how old I was, but I would guess that I was at least 10. I actually can't even remember exactly where I was when I did shoot it, but I remember my target.
In order to see exactly what would happen, I decided that I would have to aim it at a live animal. As I have always loved many mammals, I could not think of harming a bunny or a cat or dog, that would be entirely too cruel. What we always did have plenty of in the yard was birds. We had a bird bath and at any given time, at least 3 bird feeders and lots of birdseed spread under a tree. I decided that in order to test my Annie Oakley skills, I would try to hit one of the many songbirds in our yard. Sure enough, I only needed one attempt: I nailed one right on the first try.
I was entirely frightened by my own actions, that I had caused another living thing such pain. It fluttered and spun around on the ground and I was too ashamed of what I had done to even do the decent thing and shoot it again to put it out of its misery. I just ran back inside the house and returned the bb gun to the place I had found it and never felt the need to try that experiment ever again. I put it out of my mind as quickly as it had happened.
Perhaps a shot from a bb gun is not enough to harm a little song bird permanently. It's tough to say since I left the scene so quickly. But I sure hope that it flew away to tend to the wound. And I obviously do still think about it from time to time...
posted by Molly | 11:07 AM
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