TO KILL A TWEETY BIRD
Continued

A mourning dove hunkers down in a jumping cholla. Photo courtesy of Katsmeow.com

Given my history with birds, I guess it’s not surprising that I found myself recently accepting an invitation from my current boyfriend to go dove hunting with him and his friends. I had eaten dove with him on several occasions and loved the taste of the meat from the first bite. The dark, rich flavor reminded me of chicken hearts, and I have a serious addiction to hearts. So without hesitation I agreed to go. I found myself standing in a camouflage vest with a 12-gauge shotgun at four in the morning in a milo field somewhere near Eloy, Arizona, with hundreds of men also holding shotguns. I was the only woman out there.

“They all fly out of the orchard to get milo from the fields,” Robert explained to me. “Then at sundown, they all fly back to the orchard to nest for the night.”

All of us stood facing an orchard near the field where we stood. The men rested their guns on their shoulders, and their steamy breath came out in excited puffs while they laughed and talked to each other. But all eyes and thoughts were focused on the orchard.

“Here they come!” someone shouted, firing what sounded like a cannonball into the morning sky. I couldn’t see the birds flying. The sun was still tucked behind pumpkin-colored clouds, and the blackness stretched across most of the sky. But I guess the men saw them because the field became a battle zone. The doves were dive-bombing fighter jets, and we were soldiers on a loud, bloody battlefield. I could hear nothing but gunfire and see nothing but small black lumps falling from above. I feared I would be shot and die right there among the doves in my camouflage vest, gripping my shotgun. I forgot that I was supposed to shoot, and instead, clutched the gun against my chest and prepared to be shot. The mayhem lasted about 15 minutes, and then the gunfire ceased. The enemy was retreating.

Robert rushed up to me with a pocket full of dead doves. “Wow!” he said to me smiling, drunk with adrenaline. “That was insane! Liberty and I both got shot.”

He pointed at the red, curly-haired retriever standing next to him. Liberty didn’t seem to mind that pellets had wounded her chest. She sat panting with her tongue out, gray feathers stuck all over it and the sides of her mouth. She looked happy.

“The pellets just grazed us. We’ll be bruised, but we’ll live,” Robert said while pulling doves out of his vest pocket to show me. They were the color of dust, and all looked very peaceful in death. They had their eyes closed, heads tucked, and their soft, silky chests puffed out. Their eyelids were an eerie shade of blue, like little bruises over their eyes.

“I didn’t get my limit,” he told me. “How could anybody get their limit with all of them here? I’ve never seen so many people out before.” According to state law, each hunter was allowed to kill ten doves apiece per day. Robert assured me that there would be plenty of other opportunities for us to fill our limits. That first swarm of dove was only the start. Soon others would follow.

Our group of hunters and a handful of the other men were the only ones who stayed behind to wait for round two. Most of the men drove away in their pickup trucks, leaving a ceiling of desert dirt over the rest of us. The night sky began to surrender to the sun, and the orchard no longer looked like a wall of dense blackness. The trees were green, candied apples—perfectly round, supported by pale, skinny trunks. The horizon was a fire of tangerine flames burning their way through a cobweb of clouds. We stood watching the orchard, waiting for a sighting. My arms were already beginning to ache from the weight of the gun.

When the next flurry came, I was better prepared. I repeated Robert’s instructions to myself. Bring shotgun to face, not face to shotgun. Lean forward on left foot. Keep barrel firm against shoulder. Keep the gun moving. Lead the birds. Don’t shoot right at them. I stood perfectly poised in dove-killing position. I leaned forward. I closed my eyes, and I shot. I hit one. The dove curled into a ball and spiraled to the ground. I screamed. I whooped. I hollered and danced. I had killed my first dove.

“She shot her first dove,” Robert shouted to his friends, “on her very first shot!” I felt proud to have pleased him.

He picked my bird off the ground. “Look, he’s just a baby. You can tell by his pin feathers,” Robert said, pointing to the short white feathers lining his wings. “It’s been a young group. They all have pin feathers this year.”

Robert took my bird and put it in his vest pocket.

“Hey, that’s my bird,” I said to him.

“You can have your bird,” he said, and he put it into my vest pocket. I could feel the dove’s warmth against the small of my back. With time, the body grew colder.

After the second flurry had come and gone, Robert and I walked the desert land, looking in juniper bushes for doves that were hiding, always keeping an eye turned toward the sky. He taught me to recognize the flight of a dove and told me not to shoot any other birds. He and his friends called the other birds “tweeties.” When we spotted a bird, he would call out either “tweety” or “shoot!” I followed his commands.

Doves must be cleaned and chilled before rigor mortis takes over and ruins the meat. I watched while Robert and his friends extracted the doves’ breasts, rinsed them, and put them in a cooler. Kurt, one of Robert’s friends, saw me watching and decided to gross me out. He grabbed a dead dove and shoved it in my face. “You have to rip its head off…like this,” he said to me, and he twisted the dove’s head off its body and tossed it onto the ground. He waited for my reaction. I think I surprised him when I pulled my own dove out of my pocket and twisted its head off exactly as he’d showed me. “Well…okay then…next step,” he said to me, stuttering.

Step two involved splitting open the rubbery skin of the chest. A dove’s featherless chest looks like a miniature version of a grocery store chicken—pale pink and covered with goose bumps. To open the chest, I pressed my thumbs into the middle of the breast and tugged hard in opposite directions. When the wet, maroon meat popped out, I tore any attached bones left remaining and scraped the gizzards and heart out of the underside of the breastbone. We were required by law to leave one wing attached to each dove because some of the doves are called white wings, and hunters are allowed only a certain number of these a day. The dove breasts were small, about the size of a kiwi, and it takes about four dove to make a meal for one person. I appreciated the food that sat on my plate every night so much more after my day of hunting and cleaning doves.

Later in the day, I left Robert and his friends and wandered the desert by myself. The doves were sparse, and I spent a lot of that time staring at unoccupied trees and an empty sky. The sky was clear, like a freshly shined mirror, and the desert stretched like a golden ocean beyond as far as I could see. I talked to God while I walked and didn’t ask for anything. I only thanked Him for giving me two good eyes and two good legs and for allowing me that opportunity.

The sun was setting, and I knew I had to join the others soon, but I didn’t want to go back to Robert without any dove. I wanted to add more to the five I had already shot and impress him and his friends. Desperate for dove, I stood in the orchard, my eyes turned toward the treetops and my finger on the safety. The leaves were full and the trees close together. I saw only a quick flash of wings. Instinct took over. I aimed, and I shot. I hit him. He fluttered to the ground, and I ran to retrieve him. I had not killed a dove.

A beautiful tweety lay on his back, his wings spread on a blanket of leaves. He was not dead. Bright red blood stained his sun yellow chest feathers, and his little blue face showed his fear and pain. He saw me above him and was scared. He wanted to get up, to get away from me. He tried, but he couldn’t. I knew I should kill him, take him away from his pain. But I didn’t. I was ashamed of myself for making him suffer. For my pitiful cowardice. His life would be taken in vain. I would not eat him. He would fight for his life alone on the orchard floor. I hope that tweety died soon after I left.