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G4EBT > POEM 13.12.05 20:28l 99 Lines 2891 Bytes #999 (0) @ WW
BID : 391582G4EBT
Read: GUEST
Subj: "Grandpa and his dear"
Path: DB0FHN<DB0THA<DB0ERF<DB0FBB<DB0IUZ<DB0GOS<DB0RES<ON0AR<GB7FCR
Sent: 051213/1843Z @:GB7FCR.#16.GBR.EU #:17206 [Blackpool] FBB-7.03a $:391582G4
From: G4EBT@GB7FCR.#16.GBR.EU
To : POEM@WW
I mentioned in a bulletin recently that I can't understand the mentality
of people who like killing animals and birds for pleasure, let alone that
it should be called "sport". I've just read the following in a magazine,
which does nothing to advance my understanding of the warped minds of
such people:
Quote:
On Saturday, I shot a woodcock as I usually do two or three times a year.
As always, I felt reproached by the dead bird's eyes. It seems a shame to
kill something so beautiful and delicate. (They why do it, you
psychopathic moron?).
Yet there's' also a particular pleasure in shooting these birds, partly,
because they're not reared, and partly because their glancing flight makes
them quite hard to hit. By tracking the bird with your gun, you observe it
more intently.
There's a sadness about killing something so small (then why do it?),
though smallness means that wounding is unlikely and death is instant.
There's concern at one's relationship with nature, which is neither
rational nor unimportant. (Not wrong there then). But I know I'll
try to shoot another woodcock, and a snipe too if it will let me.
End quote.
It seems to me that people who engage in that sort of behaviour ought to
keep it to themselves as a guilty secret, rather than publish it and show
that they're ready for the "men in white coats".
This poem acted as a bit of an antidote to that psychotic drivel:
Grandpa and His "Dear"
CAN any one say what fun there is
In the thoughtless use of a gun,
Which takes its aim at an innocent life,
And, lo! that life is done?
The merry, happy, warbling birds,
Tho' roguish they may be,
The song they sing is pleasanter far
Than the bang of a gun - to me.
"When I was a boy," said Grandpa Gray,
"I thought, 'Now, like a man,
I'll take my gun to the fields, and bag
As many birds as I can.'
"So off I went, and I banged away,
With no thought of the pain I gave,
Till I presently met a sweet young miss
Trying one bird to save.
It had fallen near with a wounded wing,
And the look in her face so sad
Went straight to my heart, and I felt ashamed
Of myself for a heartless lad.
"Well, after that, I never could aim
At an innocent bird again,
But I took to hunting after the deer
And I did not hunt in vain;
For I've captured one, and I've never ceased
To love and cherish my 'Dear;'
And if you want to see her, boys,
Why, look at your grandmother here."
Mary Dow Brine
(1816 - 1913)
Quote of the day:
"Poetry is the record of the best and happiest
moments of the happiest and best minds".
(Percy Bysshe Shelley),
(English poet, 1792 - 1822)
73 - David, G4EBT @ GB7FCR
Eddystone User Group Member
G-QRP Club Member No: 1339
QTH: Cottingham, East Yorkshire.
Message timed: 18:40 on 2005-Dec-13
Message sent using WinPack-Telnet V6.70
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