Before it finally wore out, my 1952 model Daisy BB-gun had one hundred and ten notches on it.  That was a record.  Never before—or after, for that matter—did so many sparrows and starlings fall to my copper-clads. [I recently drove by the old building in Plymouth, Michigan, where the Daisy guns were initially made.]

In our little Western Michigan agricultural community near the end of the Korean War, the freedom to roam the streets with my Daisy was almost complete.  Except for occasional motherly reminders from a few front doors about not mistaking purple martins for starlings, most of the town folk showed little concern.  They were glad to see the pesky starlings and sparrows exterminated.

In fact, in the spirit of the legendary two-cents-a-head bounty on sparrows, I often complemented my gun kill by dashing a few nestlings to the road: my own contribution to a silent spring.

By the time I was thirteen, I had graduated to a 22.  Not my own—I couldn’t afford one—but my neighbor’s.  Knowing my penchant for bird shooting, he invited me across the fence one day, gave me brief instructions on his rusty old single-shot rifle, stuffed a handful of crimped birdshot cartridges into my jeans pocket, and directed me to his three cherry trees that were sounding a lot like the center of an overpopulated aviary.

The pop of his demonstration shot brought instant silence, except for the soft rustle of a dead starling being sifted through the leaves.  At twenty feet, the birdshot was effective.  It usually took about fifteen minutes for the flock to return, so that meant four birds an hour.  Of course Mr. Cothrell wasn’t overly concerned about the amount of dead birds; it was the relief his cherry crop received that he counted significant.  At the peak of the ripening season, I took five or six birds an hour because some of the starlings weren’t paying attention—and because some of the birds weren’t starlings.

Robins, our official state bird, were not as skittish as the blackbirds, and though I really tried to avoid shooting them, my thirst for game caused me to be careless at times, and I did not identify my prey.  Actually, after shooting a few of them without being arrested, it became much easier to do—which sort of fits the pattern of other kinds of sin.  Finally I no longer skipped the robins—until I shot a robin that wasn’t a robin.

As soon as it hit the ground, I knew I had really sinned.  I didn’t know what it was, but it wasn’t a robin.  I took the carcass home.  The next day at school I went to the library, checked out a field guide, and discovered that I had killed a rose-breasted grosbeak.  Thumbing through the guide, however, was a bit like looking at a family album, and something began to happen to my feelings.

That and one traumatic day at the cherry trees had a profound effect upon my killer instinct:  My older brother came home from college one evening early enough to see me at what had become my daily task, and he decided to share in the fun.  He jumped the fence to join me.  By this time most of the birdshot had been used up, and I was occasionally using solid slugs—which meant we had to shoot vertically (which we foolishly thought was “safe”).  In just a few minutes Dick had gotten his first starling, but he hadn’t hit it cleanly, so it fluttered down into the cover of a six-foot forsythia bush.  Relatively decent sportsmen that we were, we didn’t want to let the injured bird suffer, so we went in for the kill.  (Of course you really couldn’t call it a kill unless you had the carcass.)

Still holding the rifle, Dick instructed me to go to the far side of the bush to flush out the bird.  I did as he asked and soon spotted the bird.  So did he.  Smack!  Something hit me in the head—and my vision went to black.  Just like the old truism, I hadn’t heard the shot that got me. I was dying true to form and legend.  Strangely, however, I was still conscious; and my vision returned only to be clouded again by a stream of blood flowing down my face.  In a panic that expected the worst yet hoped, I shouted, “Dick! Did you shoot?”  The fear in my voice brought him white-faced around the bush.  Never liking the sight of blood, he could only whisper his reply, “No, I threw a rock.”

The injury wasn’t serious.  About a two-stitch cut, and a good goose egg.  But it did dampen my enthusiasm.  And since the cherries were ready to be picked, Mr. Cothrell wasn’t too disappointed when I returned the gun.  I’m sure he noted the lump on my forehead, but I certainly wasn’t going to volunteer information that would jeopardize my opportunity to help him out the following year.

Zondervan Home

By the time the next cherry harvest came, however, things were different.  About the time the cherry trees were in blossom, I had found a fledgling rock dove (the nice name for pigeons) in the old Zondervan barn from which we kids in the neighborhood had nearly exterminated its small pigeon flock.  In fact, I had put my life on the line for the little bird by scrambling up the exposed dust and dropping-covered barn beams until I reached its nest under the top window.  Stuffed in my flannel shirt, the orphan even survived the precarious descent.

Actually, Homer was a survivor in the truest sense of that word.  He (perhaps “she”—I never knew) survived the milk-soaked bread diet, its first fare in captivity; and it survived the hasty transition to cracked corn occasioned by my impatience with hand feeding.  Soon it began to feel right at home in the old wooden storage cabinet in our garage over which I had tacked a piece of screen.  After about a month, Homer began his first attempts to fly, which usually got him about as far as the hood of the car.  This was the beginning of his love affair with cars—which almost cost him his life.

Growing up in a garage must have done something to his bird psyche, because Homer never feared cars.  Denied a mother’s warm breast, he must have mistaken engine heat to be a nurturing source.  Often when we drove into the garage, Homer flew to greet us by landing on the hood to enjoy the warmth.  Then he tried it by attempting to greet a moving car on the street.  After tumbling for about ten feet in the back draft of the car, Homer flew straight to the comfort and safety of his cabinet and did not leave it all day.

Homer didn’t learn much from this scare, however, except to improve his timing.  Since there was a stop sign about fifty yards from our house, Homer took to chasing cars in the air until they stopped.  I still wonder what the driver thought the first time Homer finally caught a car: I saw the car take off slowly from the corner and disappear down the hill with Homer perched right up next to the windshield.  A few minutes later he was making a beeline for his cabinet again.  From that time until my father got tired of the pigeon droppings on the breakfast nook windowsill (from which Homer watched us eat every morning) Homer never chased cars.  A friend who raised homing pigeons agreed to give him a new home.

Years later when my oldest son was ten, a surge of nostalgia compelled me to buy him his first gun: a 1979 model Daisy BB-gun.  On Christmas day we stalked the sparrows in the bushes behind our house.  Feeling a bit like Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird, I proudly showed my shooting skill by drilling one of the little birds in the head, but the surge of pride was soon subdued by a greater surge of guilt that flooded over me when I stooped to pick up the still warm dead sparrow.  Hadn’t I learned anything during all those years?  I’m not really sure if I blushed for the sin, or for the embarrassment of being such a bad example before my son.

I do know that the only bird shooting I’ve done since that time has not been with a Daisy, but with a Canon.