Bird Hunting

The day was April 3, 1988. Harry and I were riding around with a friend on the back roads near our town. Harry was driving his mom's white Ford Crown Victoria, our friend was in the passenger seat, and I was sitting in the center of the bench seat in the back.

We were driving along the road in the picture above. It has since been repaved, but at the time the road had some large potholes in it. We weren't just joyriding, we were out sniping enemy birds. We were armed with .22's in a heavily fortified mobile unit.

As the car slowly crawled along the road, we watched for birds sitting on fences or on the ground. When one of us would spot a bird the car would stop, the person with the best shot would poke his gun barrel out the window, and the bird usually ended up on the ground with the last thoughts of "Maybe I should have flown away."

After many successful hits, we were headed back to town. In the excitement of the last shot (of which I hadn't been the shooter) I forgot my gun was still loaded. As the car rolled along the country road one of the tires hit a large pothole, I was bounced in my seat, and the gun sitting across my lap fired. We had all the windows rolled down, so the blast wasn't as loud as it could have been. But the bullet went through the passenger side door to my right, shattering the glass that was down inside the door.

Harry stopped the car, we checked that we are all still alive, then we headed home. There was no hiding this one. The small bullet hole in the interior of the back passenger door and the outward dent on the outside of the door where the bullet hadn't quite made it all the way through the door meant we couldn't even fabricate a story to hide the truth. We cleaned the broken glass out of the back seat and I kept this bag of it as a memento of stupidity (see picture above).

Sometimes teenagers just don't think!