I used to shoot small birds

Yes, back in the day, I pleasured me by shooting to death… sparrows.

(not pretty, is it?)

Not proud of it. And as Texan-Rightly, not ashamed of it neither. (What we did then, back in the day…)

“Just Texan Kids havin’ fun,” they would say. (‘They’, generally being Grandmothers—maternal grandmothers)

“They looked aside.”

Looking back now, I am ashamed of all the sparrow lives I so easily and callously took.  Tis a small thing in the big scheme of things, yes I Know. But, it bothers me still. As I am certain the memory of dead kittens haunts my ‘maternal’ grandfather over all those ‘Damn-we-got-too-many-cats-he’ah-on-this-place.” (As he shot them to death in front of my young, sensitive, later to become, my mother)

Mental scars

Many.

****

Don’t shoot sparrows

And don’t shoot kittens.

They will haunt you.

For some many years.

I suppose this is the point of this post.

‘Don’t shoot.’ (unless the sparrow is trying to kill you, that is…)

-Lance