Village Squire, 1979-11, Page 24light filtering through a crack in the boards behind them.
It was a perfect shot. I cocked the gun and fired.
The birds flew into panic. All but one that is. The birds
flittered off the beam but seeing me in the only exit, they were
afraid to make their escape past me. 1 cocked again. A bird
landed on the beam to rest for a second and I aimed at the black
silhouette and fired. Again the birds panicked except for the two
that now lay in the thin layer of snow below the beam. A few
birds escaped but most in their terror, seemed blinded.
I cocked and fired again, and again, and again, until finally all
the birds had become desperate enough to fly right past my
shoulders and into the freedom of the sky.
I walked to the back of the shed. Spots of red splattered the
snow. Ten tiny bodies were quivering out their lives. Where was
the pride I should have felt at this marvellous hunting feat?
Instead of the feeling of exhileration I had expected there was
dull, aching, sickening feeling. They were only messy, noisy,
bothersome house sparrows. There were thousands more flying
around building nests in eavestroughs and a hundred places they
weren't wanted. They were pests, among the most despised of
birds. And they were dying.
Perhaps it would have been more dramatic if I'd been sick to
my stomach. I wasn't. In fact, I'd probably have felt better if I
had been; I could at least have felt sorry for myself. Instead, I
just stood dumbly and stared at those ten bodies as one by one
they stopped their spastic fluttering and lay still. They were only
pests, but they had been living things and now they were no
longer. I alone was responsible for that fact. I alone was
responsible for that fact that ten living things were now no longer
living and that they were not living for no real reason at all.
Numbly I went back to the house and hung up the gun on its
hooks in the summer porch. It only came down a couple of times
after that for some target practice when city cousins visited. I
gave up hunting except for one snowy Saturday afternoon
A GIFT FOR CHRISTMAS
& ALL YEAR
RINGS &
GOLD JEWELLERY'
LARGE SELECTION
OF CLOCKS
(CARAVELLE & BULOVA)
SEIKO WATCHES
LARRY LACROIX
JEWELLER
PHONE 271-0521 -- 98 WELLINGTON ST.
STRATFORD, ONT.
22 Village Squire, November 1979
(83
t.\
WE ARE OPEN
W E ARE OPEN
ATOUR
AT OUR
NEW LOCATION
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20 JOHN ST. WEST
WEST
WINGHAM
Just behind the T.D. Bank
PHONE 357-2023
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Drop in or phone us
for your flower requirements.
We will do our best to please you.
WINGHAM, ONT.
en
In Time
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A SOUND FOR EVERYONE
For after hour appointments Phone 235-0771
Closed Wednesdas, open Frida. till 8 p.m.
429 Main St., Exeter 235-2522