I with birds - World Famous Literary Works

Author: Jack Mainer (Canada) / Country:
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2006-04-01
Features: Okay, my pet, the first one I remember, was a young blue jay. Naturally, I wanted him to live forever, so I pushed him to eat fish and insects until his throat was full. The next morning, the blue bird was still blue, but it wasn’t making a sound. What I remember next is how my father, to settle a dispute between me and my brother over our pet opossum, grabbed its nose and injured it in the corner of the old barn. I also remember starting to raise a pair of white rabbits in the spring of one year, and by autumn, I used every box in the house to keep rabbits, even flipping over my father’s old delivery wagon, with rabbits tumbling inside. When I needed to use the wagon, I had a lot of trouble. Because I had traps set around my rabbit cage, I was confident that my neighbor’s cat hadn’t gotten any.
I remember how wonderful it was to see the geese and hear them “Hoo! Hoo!” Their flight through the sky, especially during their spring and autumn migrations over the ancient and beautiful Ohio P4 state, was something I’d gaze at twice to make sure I could see them clearly. Ah, I often stood there clenched in fists, so eager to grow up so I could follow them to distant places to catch one as a pet. But it wasn’t until I immigrated to Canada that this truly meaningful thing came true. I had all sorts of prey and pets—squirrels, raccoons, foxes, crows, ravens, and I even kept a nest of young eagles until my father discovered them and I gave up. You know, we had one day off a week, and I made the most of it.
Although I could wander through the endless forest, my ambitions were even higher. So I found a pair of climbing spikes, which allowed me to climb up to the nests of the hawks and crows, no matter how high they were. I clearly remember how I shot my first deer and how I pried open the kitchen -high cabinet to steal my mother’s old white serving spoon to cast bullets. That spoon had a huge handle, ancient and said to have traveled from somewhere in the world, dating back to the time of Noah’s flood. I hammered it, altering its old shape, melted it, and forged seven tiny bullets, while my unsuspecting mother watched me work.
By noon, the snow had stopped, and I put the seven bullets into the old hunting rifle with a thumb-operated trigger and set off for my first deer hunt. By noon, I returned home with a beautiful deer. If I had another melted spoon in another rifle, I would have definitely shot two.