Neither mom nor dad were home

Neither mom nor dad were home. I carried my prey to the back door of the Thomas’s two houses north of us. My sweet aunt Helen came out and I proudly showed her the deceased cardinal. She said, ‘Poor little bird. I bet his mommy is really sad.’ I was shocked. The brave warrior is supposed to be praised for his hunting prowess. This really stuck in my head and I just never got into killing game, even for food.

I am one of the few males in my extended family who has never killed a deer and doesn’t hanker to head off to the deer lease on opening day of deer season.

Dad continued to hunt squirrel for the rest of his life. He upgraded the shotgun to the Browing Automatic that he had lusted for for years. He belonged to a conservancy group that gave him rights to hunt on a pretty large tract of land in the Big Thicket.