I once killed a bird with a golf ball that I hit off a tee. It was a terrible shot -- sliced wildly through the air toward a small, wooded area. My ball went into the tree, and then a bird was deposited to the ground. By the way the bird landed, it was obvious the ball killed it on impact.
Surprisingly, for a 15-year-old, I felt terrible, and recalled that this was not the first time a bird had died at my hands. This tragic event took me back some years to an afternoon when my best friend and I were goofing around in a field behind his house. Todd had a BB gun, which was something my parents had forbidden me to have, not that I’d ever asked for one. Judging by my prowess with the firearm, I would never be a danger with a BB gun to anyone other than unintended targets.
Todd set up cans and bottles as targets. He would take a turn and hit a few of them, and then give me a chance and I would miss everything but the ground.
Bored with missing bottles and cans, I looked elsewhere and spotted a Blue Jay on a branch of nearby tree. To this day, I still do not know why I chose to point that BB gun at that bird. Even though I had demonstrated all afternoon that I couldn’t hit the broad side of an elephant with a barn, I would normally never, ever considered shooting an animal.
But there I was: one eye closed, the other eye staring down the barrel of a rifle. I fired. The speed with which the BB hit the bird was possibly equalled by the speed by which my body was consumed with regret for ever pointing that gun skyward.
But that was just the beginning. When Todd and I found the bird, it was laying on its back, staring up at the sky. We stood over him and he looked at us. The Blue Jay blinked. He was still alive.
Fast forward an hour and Todd is saying things like, “That was one tough bird,” “I guess he had a lot to live for” and “Maybe he would have been able to live with the one BB.”
It’s that last line that gets me. The reason for that is because when Todd and I were standing over the still-alive bluejay, we determined the best thing to do for this bird was to put it out of its misery.
So I once again pointed the BB gun at the bird and pulled the trigger.
It was still looking right at us, still alive.
I shot it again. And again. And again.
In all, I shot it 13 times before it finally died and I was at last able to bury him.
For the next few weeks, I buried myself with the memory, shame and saddness of what I did that afternoon.
I even had a nightmare where there was a knock on my door, which I opened to find a person-size bluejay standing there, trail of BBs behind him. The giant bird is breathing heavy and he looks right at me and says, “Remeber me?!” Then he spreads out his wings and shakes his body, like some kind of an exotic dancer, making a sound, much like that of change jingling in a pants pocket.
All of these memories come rushing back to me as I stood, golf club in hand, staring at another bird that I had killed, this time with a golf ball. At the very least, I was fortunate to not have to put the bird out of its misery, as the image of me repeatedly clubbing this bird was almost more than I could take.
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