Dead birds

I have an uneasy feeling about those birds dying in great numbers, first in Arkansas and then in several other places in the United States and outside it. And it is not because the birds are dying but because the authorities seemingly cannot convincingly explain the deaths.

Aside from birds, fish are also dying, again in great numbers and in several places. And just as with the birds, the authorities also cannot seemingly explain the deaths in a manner that can put the issue to rest.

To be sure, this is not the first time that birds and fish have died in great numbers. What makes it a first time is for these creatures to apparently die together at the same time, as well as for the authorities to be at a loss for authoritative explanations.

I belong to a generation that held a special affinity for the slingshot. Like marauding pirates, kids of my generation would often roam the vast open spaces available to us in the 1960s in search of adventure. In many of those adventures, the slingshot often played a pivotal role.

The slingshots provided us security from other kids, as well as our needs. We could shoot down fruits with them and from there graduated to bats and birds. The regret and dismay over this cruel “sport” would not come until much later, as we grew older.

While I excelled in a number of childhood games (I was the best bamboo swordsman in our neighborhood and champion in “ba-ba” or horse wrestling, the horse being of course just another kid upon whose shoulders I rode), I was a poor bird-shooter.

Actually, I was not bad with slingshots. I was not excellent but I was not poor either. I could take down a green mango, but mainly because a mango does not fly away. It simply waits for your second try. And then you clip it neatly and it falls, cracking up as it hits the ground.

A green mango that gets smashed as it hits the ground is a joy to eat. Maybe the impact triggers some chemical reaction in the green mango, but I swear it doesn’t taste as sour as when you eat it plucked straight from the branch uninjured.

What makes a green mango taste extremely sour is when just as your teeth sinks into its flesh to test its crispiness, you hear the mango tree owner screaming and running toward you with an unsheathed bolo. Then the fruit just tastes like acid in your mouth as you run for your life.

Unlike the mango that allows for second chances, a bird does not. It flies away promptly when you miss it the first time. I think now is as good a time as any to make a clean breast of it. So, to all the kids I bragged to at the time: I only hit two birds in my lifetime, not 46.

I never really liked shooting at birds. Then, as now, I truly hate harming animals. I had to shoot birds with a slighshot as a child because that was what kids do in my time. In the two times that I actually hit my target, I had a hard time sleeping afterward.

I never ate my catch, which was the childhood purpose of all the bird shooting in the first place. I wrapped mine in newspaper and buried them under a clump of gumamelas that formed a border fence in front of my old childhood home in Wireless, Mandaue City.

When birds started dying in great numbers in Arkansas, and pictures of them were being shown on CNN, I was promptly reminded of the dead birds of my childhood and how we kids at the time killed them.

I wonder if the dead birds in Arkansas and elsewhere were not also killed by kids that have grown into men. I know for a fact that kids no longer play with slingshots in these times. But in their place have come far worse weapons capable of inflicting far greater carnage.

These weapons do not even have a definite shape. All that is needed for them to be unleashed is to simply not care about the environment and what such negligence can do to all living things. No wonder the authorities are at a loss for words. Man’s folly is indescribable.