The Killing of the Dove

Today seemed like a good day to get this down. I’m feeling a little morose about life lately…just behind the curve of where I think I should be lately. Could be a few things… just so much to do and not enough time. I would like to think now that this experience I’m going to relay was one of childhood ignorance. Something we all must go through , in one way or another, to zero our more compass and let us establish a true heading.

When I was 7 I was given one of the most sacred of entitlements a young boy can have. I was gifted an BB gun. I think in todays vernacular one would describe it as an “air rifle”. But in 1982 in Lake Orion, Michigan I was presented with the legendary Crosman Pumpmaster Classic with wood stock. I was bequeathed this piston powered pandemonium machine by my grandfather. Per my grandmothers concern, I was given all the precautions and warnings of the dangers owing this new “firearm” and released into the wilds behind my grandparents house to hunt down wild beasts and pop bottles. ( It wasn’t til a year later that I was able to sit in a movie theater and commiserate with a young Ralphie Parker about almost shooting ones own eye out)

For months thereafter I would take off into the pines behind my grandparents’ house looking for pesky critters to dispatch. There was the a very defined “no kill” list… robins, cardinals, chickadees. Cats and Dogs…. and most of all Skunks. I was engaged to kill as many chipmunks and red squirrels as I could because they were the mortal enemy of my grandfather who did battle with them weekly trying to assault his 4 bed room, 2 bath ranch home in the suburbs. Not only was I on patrol to fend off vermin… I was now the only boy on the dead end road that openly carried a rifle down the road ( this was actually pretty normal back then as in the fall the much older neighbor boy would go rabbit hunting in the nearby fields with his shotgun following my same footsteps) Since I was younger it drew the attention of some of my compadres in the neighborhood. We would sit at the end of the driveway and shoot Pepsi cans off the split rail fence as fast as we could suck them down. It was good being the only 7 year old gun slinger on Neuman Road and I thought this may be my career when I grew up. Well, as fate would have it, I would learn a valuable lesson in the next few weeks as summer faded into fall.

In all honesty I never killed a damn thing until October of 1982. Yes…I had set a mouse trap.. I may have gone fishing… blah blah blah. I never shot anything and ended it’s life until that day when I shot the dove. It was something that has stuck around in my head for decades and it surfaces now and again when I’m at my low points. My grandparents lived on a dead end road but that was changing. People were moving to the area and a new road grade had been plowed into the pines behind their house. It was a mire of mud, uprooted trees and dying pines about 50 feet wide. Soon it would be cleared off and paved, but for the time being it was this path through the trees. The day had started off as any other and found the neighborhood kids and I at the end of the driveway tossing a ball and talking about what had happened at school. On a whim I busted out the Crosman because the collection of cans needed to be thinned out before they could organize an ambush. Plink…..Plink…. Twunk…. Plink. The sounds of accurate and precise marksmanship. ( I cant tell you how many misses there were between the sounds…but they greatly outweighed the success rate). It was about that time that the neighbor girl, Kelly, passed the gun back to me. Kelly was a few years older than me and was going to be my wife. She didnt know it yet.. but every story I had been read to told me that the good guy with the gun gets the girl and lives happily ever after.

The dove sat alone on the telephone lines just above where our shooting gallery of cans were arranged. I had spied it there before we started plinking. It never moved…just sat there with the occasional “cooo….cooo”. Its distance from the ground and the inaccuracy of the bb gun just made it a fruit just out of reach. I don’t know what made me level those iron sights on the thing and pull the trigger–but I did…. the pwathunk of the air escaping the end of the barrel made the dove jump and ………………. nothing. It just sat there on the line. “What are you shooting at? That bird?!?!” asked Kelly…. which attracted the other kids. ” Yeah… but you cant hit it… too far away” I replied. I started the ritual… Puff-wack—-puff-wack—–puff-wack Three pumps. Pulled back the brass pin that fed the breach…checked to make sure the little death ball bb was in the chamber…. aimed… and pwathunk. Once again the dove moved abruptly, shaken, but reaffirmed it’s grip on the wire and steadied itself. “See….it’s not even afraid of it” I proclaimed.

We spent the next 4 or 5 min taking turns lobbing salvos of bb’s out of the gun. Always with the same result… a startled bird… and us saying maybe a couple more pumps to get it up there. No one thought that what we were doing was wrong…no one thought eventually-with enough pumps–that we may hit this poor creature and then what.

Then it happened.

Before I could level my next shot–both Kelly and the neighbor Todd had both took their turns–the dove departed. It flew upwards and then took a sharp turn and descended abruptly into my grandparents yard… a twisting display of feathers and despair. I ran up to it thinking Todd or Kelly must have have connected with one of their shots. On closer inspection… the bird was riddled with small holes… some bb’s imbedded just below the skin… others deeper where small tears of blood started to weep from wounds. If you have ever have the feeling of dread come over you for the first time you know that part of you goes numb and cold for a brief second and that there is a massive sinking feeling in your chest as the realization of your situation and your actions become a reality. I did this. We did this.

I heard this voice from up the road. “Did you kids shoot that bird?!?!” It was Kelly’s mom looking down on us from her porch. Yes…No… Yes… Our replies a mingled aberration of guilt and admission. “Is it dead? “-she demanded “No, Its just hurt” I confirmed. “You better take it and put it out of it’s misery and dont ever let me see you kids do that kind of shit again” she scowled at us. And trust me… we took it as gospel.

I ran up to my grandparents garage and grabbed some of the rags my grandfather kept in his shop. We took the dove and put it in a small box surrounded by my grandfathers torn up socks and white t shirts. It would struggle for a second…then stop.. it’s head slowly dropping to one side as it’s injuries took it’s life. We managed to make our way to the newly plowed road behind the house. It seemed like a place where we could hide our sins from the eyes of adult for the time being. We sat there all looking at this poor bird… asking each other what we were supposed to do. There was finger pointing and blame and even the fires of a fight were brewing… but it quickly faded as the October evening set in and streetlight warnings told us we all needed to be home soon.

All except me.

There I sat with this bird… watching it die. I’ve really thought about this over the years and it comes to mind quite often when I’m driving and I see roadkill or a overzealous squirrel trying to cross the road– and the thought is this– ” That really just… just is shit. That ” insert animal here” got up today and decided that it was gonna go about it’s business… fly here… waddle over to that side of the road… and bam… it’s whole existence is muted by a bad decision and an oncoming chevy emblem. That animal was just trying to live… what a raw fucking deal, man”

The dove died a useless and silent death. I buried it at the base of some pines and left nothing to mark it but this memory burnt into my mind. I’ve killed many things since… deer, rabbits, coyotes…and yes…even a skunk or two. The thing is… nothing has filled me with more loathing for my own existence than that first feeling of dread about needlessly taking a life than when I was 7. I took time away from a creature that never did me any harm and I took it’s life with no intent of feeding myself or using it’s sacrifice in any beneficial way. I did it because I was ignorant and I could. I have since changed that about myself… tempered my steel in a way.

I guess we all have to go through these growing pains… I just wanted to get this down before time may steal it’s vividness away.