I
hate to do this but I am going to have to go out there and shoot one of my
prettiest male cardinals. He has gone mad! I haven’t killed a songbird since I was 12, and I protested at
the Melba theatre as a teenager when that movie “To Kill a Mockingbird” came
out. I am an avid bird lover. I
particularly love pheasant in a crock-pot and grilled mallard. But not cardinals, for cryin’ out
loud.
Anyhow,
he is miserable and deserves to be put out of his misery. He spends most of the day fighting with
the big mirrors on my old pickup.
When you see a male cardinal do that, completely oblivious to a nearby
feeder filled with sunflower seeds and uninterested in several pretty little
female cardinals, he is obviously demented, perhaps having survived a spring
hailstorm wherein he was whacked on the head while huddled on a white oak limb.
By
the time you read this the awful thing will already be done, but I ask you to
keep it to yourself. It is against
one of the many rules and regulations of the Conservation Department. In fact, in recent years a game warden
has ended his radio program by saying, “Remember,
if we don’t say you can, you can’t.”
And they
don’t say you can kill a cardinal, even a mad cardinal.”
Because
of his radio program I have stopped killing the field mice that invade my shed,
and I do not kill crickets, roaches or spiders because he surely would not
approve. There use to be a
copperhead in my back yard that I also was hesitant to kill because the
conservation people say I can’t do it lawfully. But there are a lot of things done unlawfully which never
come to light. Something killed him and he now lives in snake heaven with
several blacksnakes I have recently blasted because they are after baby rabbits
and nestling bird babies.
I
told a possum recently trying to invade my henhouse, “If I don’t say you can,
you can’t!” Of course I gently
took him to my neighbors place, refusing to kill him as the game warden would
not want me to do. Should any of
you country folks find a possum eating your hen eggs, just remove him gently
with a shovel. If you whack him
over the head to render him unconscious then you can take him into town and
release him later. I think
that should be legal.
Someone
sitting on my screened porch last month, shot and killed a grey squirrel that
was trying to get the lid off my bird feeder. It was a young one which was very good to eat when fried.
But
a cardinal whose flapping wing-tips scratch up the paint job on my pickup while
he fights with nothing more than a reflection in a now-smudged-up mirror
certainly should not be allowed to have young ones. His I.Q. is likely too low. My pickup means a lot to me. I bought it new in 2010 and it was beautiful at the
time. Not now. It has 200 thousand
miles on it and it has wing marks and white bird manure all over it.
***********
Many
years ago I built a small pond up here on Lightnin’ Ridge down in the timber
behind my office, to provide a water hole for wildlife and provide a place for wood
ducks and bullfrogs. It is round,
about 60 or 70 feet across and 60 or 70 feet long, those dimensions making “round”
a pretty good description of it.
It is a pretty good haven for green sunfish and bluegill. My daughter and I have a great big tank
and aerator out in the shade beside my boat, and we catch about 60 or so of the
small sunfish and keep them in the tank to use for baiting trotlines.
I
had forgotten that ten years or so my Uncle Norten and I had caught some nice
bass on the river and released them into my pond, despite the fact that the
Conservation Department don’t say you can do that either.
Good
gosh have they grown! A monster
largemouth lives there now. He came
up from the depths to engulf my tiny perch-catching jig and he fought all over
that pond before the little hook broke.
I saw him well and my daughter says his mouth was the size of a dinner
plate!
Boy
was she excited! Not me so
much. As you can imagine I have
caught lots of bass between 8 and 10 pounds, and turned them all loose, some
after I landed them, and most before. Now my daughter won’t help me catch
bait. She is after that big
bass. Will take a picture when she
gets it.
***************
I
had a ton of reader letters concerning what I have written about the TSE
disease affecting deer, elk, cattle and humans. I will put some of them in this column soon. You might want to read more about it in
my summer issue of the Lightnin’ Ridge Outdoor magazine, on many newsstands now.
Call
my office to get one if you can’t find it in Walmart, Oerscheln or some other
store. My number is 417-777-5227.
Email me at lightninridge47@gmail.com
or write to me at Box 22, Bolivar, Mo. 65613
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