Hunting for Words
By The buck pauses in the woods, splendid points, hard-won and beautiful, the kind that only come with age.
The man gets him in the cross hairs and the buck is reduced to burritos for the office luncheon.
It’s that time of the year again and I’m at a loss for words when men come return from “hunting vacations.”
Did you have a good time? just seems like a perverse question. Did you have fun traipsing through the woods to find something to kill? Do you enjoy cleaning your gun? Is it relaxing to wait in the blind for the rustle of leaves while listening to the sound of the forest creatures? Does the anticipation thrill you? Do you party afterwards and compare testosterone levels over shots of whiskey while the body hangs over the hood of your truck? Do you hang your shirt on his rack when you gut him?
It’s different if someone returns from a cruise or a visit with family. There’s lots of things to ask. Did you have a good time? Did you see beautiful things? How was the family? Did you get some sun? Were drinks all-inclusive? What was the weather like in [name of place here]? Are shoes cheaper in Puerto Rico?
But I can’t bring myself to ask men if they had a good time because I’m afraid I would get pissed in a passive-aggressive way if they answered in the affirmative. I mean, what fun can it possibly be to kill something? Is remorse involved at all? Or is it merely like shooting at a canvas target, as if it didn’t involve the actual ending of a life and a soul? Do they look into the eyes of their prey?
I get that the deer population needs to be controlled. I don’t really hate hunters. I just wonder about the physiology of their brains. I also wonder about the brains of women who carefully cover toilet seats with tissue paper to keep from getting germs, then leave the tissue on the seat after they’re done. Or the brains of people who forget that their children are in the car. So I wonder about hunters’ brains. Why do they become hunters? What is it they enjoy about killing?
I guess that the primitive portion of my brain never existed, or it evolved itself into oblivion leaving only enough behind to allow me to kill flies, roaches, and spiders … though I still feel bad about it. And there’s enough left to allow me to eat a cheeseburger, or a slab of salmon on occasion.
See? I’m a hypocrite. I fully admit it. Though I can tell you that if I HAD to kill my own food, I never would eat another animal, fish, or crustacean again. Even if you handed me a rifle, and put a gun to my head and told me I HAD to kill an animal or die, I would say tell my daughter I love her, and spread my ashes in Cook’s Forest. Really. Even the thought of touching a gun is abhorrent to me. It would be like touching a hot iron on purpose.
The last time I attempted to fish I couldn’t bring myself to impale the poor, twitching shrimp. But when I was little I used to fish with Dad. I remember catching a big Walleye. When Dad ran to get a net (not easy with one stiff leg) I put the poor, gasping thing back into the water.
I like to think there is a very old, very happy, walleye making lazy circles in a cold lake in Maine.
~written by Deborah Klein, Safety Harbor resident blogger
