AUTHOR’S NOTE: Few things in life provide more joy than a daughter and I’ve yet to discover a single “thing”, save a son, which is an equal in this regard.
This story, like the others in the book, is true and became nationally known, recognized as one of the few stories penned in modern America that changed the wrongful thinking of the non- or anti-hunters nationwide. It seems from some of the letters I received praising this piece (I never thought it would sell!) that those who do not hunt, or even remotely understand the hunters of America, felt we were heartless, callous and uncaring, bloodthirsty “beasts.” Not so. Not even close…
As for the young lady in “To Cry for Waxwings,” the reader will have to decide whether she ultimately went to the autumn woods with Pop, rifle in hand. I can only tell you this: I fully understood her sentiments; after all, she is blood of my blood, though perhaps, a touch softer in heart?
To Cry for Waxwings
by Joseph Michael Parry,
(first published, 1995, in Pennsylvania Game News)
Imagine, if you will, a little girl with long, flowing, silken hair that could put the beauty of a full autumn moon to certain shame. Her smile warm enough to melt the calloused heart of a barbarous dictator. And a laugh so terribly contagious and tender you feel there should be some exotic law prohibiting it, but deep down you’re glad there isn’t.
This little girl with a walk so cute, so wonderfully unique, delicately feminine, you feel a hug from your manly father’s arms might hurt her. And so, you often wait until your emotion and love is a little more in control before you do. To yourself, you describe her walk as that of a happy little penguin.
And again, imagine a kiss “good night” so warm and wondrous it leaves your heart begging and aching for just one more, long after she’s gone to bed. Could this describe your little girl? I know I was blessed with one just like this, and I’m having a terrible time deciding just how I’m going to place a high-powered rifle into her soft little hands, train her to shoot it, then in my deep baritone say, “There ya go! Now go kill a deer, sweetheart!”
Little lady that God made her, she nevertheless loves the taste of venison and the fact that Pop shot it matters not. She was literally raised on it and again, little lady that she is, she has predatory blood chemicals coursing within her system. However deep they may be, they still exist. Like the folks in the Ragu commercials used to say, “It’s in there!”
A few years back an urgent writing assignment consumed my most favored deer season. I’d not missed one in nearly forty years and it hurt. Then, and now, that hurt lingers, still today. It meant a winter without venison and my children and I cherish these meals of wild bounty with unique reverence. This would be the first and hopefully the last winter we would suffer through without the sacred deer meat ….
The aforementioned little girl’s birthday falls in May and days before the 10th of that month, I asked her what she’d like Poppa to get her for her birthday. “Do you want to know what I’d really like, Pop?”
“Yes, honey, what?”
“I’d like to have venison steaks for my birthday supper!”
Immediately, I began to entertain thoughts about poaching, but it never went beyond that, for people who know me often refer to me as “The Preacher.” I’ve always had a personal vendetta against poor field ethics and the illegal (or careless!) taking of game. So honestly, the poaching thought never got to any level of serious deliberation.
So what does a father do, in May of the year that will place venison on his daughter’s birthday dinner plate? They don’t sell the stuff! I did, though it shames me to admit it, consider begging a local game commission officer for a warm, not too damaged roadkill. After all, a man has a cuddly, loving daughter for far too short a time, and during those precious, priceless years he ought to bust his ever-loving derriere to fill her every want and need ….
This lack of venison made me distraught and feeling as helpless as I’d every felt. It’s my job, the job of all “Pops” everywhere, to fill dreams and wishes, and personally, it always filled my heart when I was able to accomplish what were sometimes small miracles. It brought my deep love of fatherhood to its emotional apex.
Then one afternoon, just prior to her birthday, I mentioned my dilemma to a neighbor, not knowing he had a cache of venison in his freezer. Bless his hunting heart, he walked to his deep-freeze, plucked out two packages of backstraps and handed them to me. “Here,” he said, “tell Erika to have a happy birthday!”
In a sense, I was saved this time, by the 30-06 my neighbor owned. And I felt justified accepting the venison, for I’d spent considerable time sighting-in the cantankerous old mauser he killed the deer with. We had it grouping nickel-sized clusters consistently at 100-yards. I recalled his words that afternoon at the range: “This old beast never shot so well, Joe! I owe ya one ….” His debt, now, of course, is off the books. (Never was one to hold a debt between friends and/or neighbors!)
I convey all of this because I felt that if she so loves the taste of venison, then she must learn to provide it for herself. Soon, and for all those times after Poppa leaves this fine Earth. Thus, she must learn to hunt, right? And soon she would come of hunting age, so I approached (tentatively!) her mother regarding The Matter ….
“I’m not allowing you to take our little girl deer hunting!” That pretty much settled things? Well, perhaps in the beginning “arguments”. However, before studying biology, I cracked a few law books and at one point, felt F. Lee Bailey may have to sit in my backseat, so ….
After relentless cross-examination, Mother came up with, “How is she going to shoot one of those big guns, anyway?”
My reply: “Rifles, dear. As in this is my rifle, this is my gun. You see, a pistol is a gun. Remember the story I told you about my Army drill instructor?”
Nearly squealing, she answered, “Regardless! She’s a lady and she shouldn’t be out deer hunting with her father!”
I defended, “Honey, is that not better than her getting involved with some brain-dead, pimply meathead boy in her school? At least she’ll be safe with me in the deer woods!”
My wife looked over at Erika, arms crossed over her heaving chest, and Erika smiled, exposing those celestial dimples, deep enough to mix cake batter in.
She shrugged her shoulders, tilted her angelic head to where her silken hair fell to one side like a wonderland waterfall and said, “I do love venison, Mom!”
Mom studied her daughter but a few seconds, then said, “Well, if you’re going to hunt with that nut you call your father, you can use one of his guns! We don’t need another gun in this house! I can’t vacuum or dust around the guns as it is!”
I cut in to terminate this “gun” madness. “In three sentences, dear, you used the term ‘guns’. They’re rifles, sweetheart, rifles!”
She had me bewildered regarding my being prohibited from buying just one more gun – pardon, rifle. Certainly I was pleased with her decision to allow Erika the privilege and option of hunting with me, but as far as “… not needing another ‘gun’ in the house!” That hurt. Since we have but three-dozen between my son, Justin, and me! And yes, it is true, as written so many times, a man never has quite enough ‘guns.’ However, I was pussyfooting through a minefield here and felt I’d best tread lightly….
“Okay, Erika, how do you feel about all of this? Would you like to attend hunters’ education classes this fall and hunt deer with Justin and Poppa?”
“I don’t know, Poppa. I’m still not sure I could kill a deer.”
“Honey, listen. That’s something your heart will dictate when the moment presents itself. For even though everyone, deep down inside, has a hunter in them, not all of us are cut out, as they say, to kill when the time comes. Your Grandfather Parry hunted some eighteen years and never once shot a deer! And, hey, that’s okay! What with all the hunters out there today, things are perhaps a little out of biological balance, in that there is far less huntable land. Erika, God and Nature are pretty much one and the same, and it seems as though things are pretty much taken care of out there when needed. Always on a pretty even keel, so to speak. If you decide you don’t want to shoot when the time comes, don’t pull the trigger! You’ll know in your heart, ‘Rik, what’s right for you and what isn’t. Just take hunters’ ed and we’ll go from there, okay?”
“We’ll see, Pop, but for now, how ’bout answering this question?”
“Shoot, sweetheart!” I thought this was going to be another question about rifles or deer hunting….
“Pop, do you remember that little waxwing bird we found hurt and sick?”
“I sure do; why?”
“Okay, now. You love hunting deer more than anything in the world, right?”
“Well, not quite. I love just being with you a whole lot more!”
“Pop! You know what I mean! You’re an outdoor writer and, in a way, you hunt for a living. You’re supposed to be rough and tough, right?”
“Kinda…” I answered, wondering feverishly where she was going with all this questioning.
“Well, then, tell me. How come you can kill a deer and yet the day that little cedar waxwing died after you’d tried so hard to nurse her back to normal, you cried?”
“I never cried when that bird died!”
“Poppa. I saw the tears on your cheeks when you were burying her out back!” I was had, as they say….
“Okay, honey, let me try to explain. You see, most hunters have more love for wildlife, because of their understanding of it, than the people who don’t hunt, at least in some ways. I suppose it’s because we’re so much more aware of the hardships wildlife species face, day in and day out. We’re out there much of the time between early autumn and, say, late January, when the weather is the worst and the snows are the deepest. We’re able, then, to see, and it is hurtful, what the animals are up against most of the time, just finding enough food to make it through the winters. Their struggles are, at best, exhausting, which is why I’ve always held to the old adage that the bullet is more merciful than time. That’s why most hunters love animals so deeply, domestic or wild. Animals of the wild are very special to most of us, though, and we’re pretty much able to relate to most of their hardships.”
“Is that why you cried when the waxwing died, Pop?”
“Honey, a hunter’s heart is almost always an understanding heart. Especially when it comes to an animal dying. When I placed that little waxwing into the ground, I felt it died without purpose. Without sound reason, biological or otherwise. But then, I’m not God, and cannot try to play God. But, still, I don’t understand death without purpose and, even though I always question it, I probably shouldn’t.”
“As I patted down the dirt on the little bird’s grave, Erika, I could almost see its entire, short life passing before my mind’s eye. I could see it in its little speckled eggshell. A mere embryo in what must have been a warm, strange darkness. I thought perhaps it wondered just what it was doing in there, unable to move about freely. What that wall was around her, or whether it even thought about anything? Who knows, honey, how animals and little birds think, or if they think before they’re born? Anyway, I could envision that little unfeathered mass growing stronger and bigger. Finally, outgrowing the size of its confining capsule, and I could well-picture the little bird struggling in an attempt to escape the shell. Its matchstick legs kicking, hell-bent for freedom, for daylight. Squirming in a courageous effort to have a look-see at the world outside, a world it knew nothing about, no knowledge of what lay in store for it once it saw daylight, yet still it wanted to know!”
“Then, I could picture the fuzzy little poult patiently awaiting food delivery from its parents, little mouth opening with every movement of the limb on which the nest rested. Just waiting and hungry for a simple grub worm or bug, and totally dependent on the parent birds.”
“Feathered now, the little waxwing was able to move about the nest. I could envision it struggling some more, in an effort to mimic the mother’s flight. The constant falling and the continued efforts to get it right, so Mother would be proud. Up, down. Up and down, then finally, and beautifully, up, and soaring high above the woodland floor! The hard-found accomplishment of sustained flight came, but after considerable pain and relentless efforts. And its reward for all this? Only that it could now fend for itself. Yet another struggle – a constant, in the life of all wild things.
“And that little waxwing beauty had to die in its first few months of life? Erika, it all seemed very unfair to me. Very final, hurtful, and without purpose, and I didn’t have the answer to ‘why?’ Now, what does my telling you all of this have to do with your deer hunting?”
“Nothing ‘xactly, Poppa. I just wondered how someone as soft-hearted as you can hunt and kill deer, that’s all!”
“Honey, I suppose I hunt because I am soft-hearted. I suppose, too, it’s my strange way of coming to some understanding of life and, yes, of death, too. Perhaps it helps me to better understand how very precious life is, when I try to take the life of an animal. I try not to defend or to justify my love of the hunt, or the final act I perform out there in the woods. Hey, God made me what I am and if He didn’t want me to hunt and kill animals, then He would make the taste of killing a little more bitter for me than it is. I don’t always question why I hunt, or why I kill game animals. But, Erika, if I didn’t feel hunting was the best method for keeping wildlife in the proper balance, which is indeed for their own benefit, or if I didn’t hurt after each and every kill – which I always do – I would certainly question myself more.
“In a way, Erika, deer are like beautiful flowers. When the flower-garden gets too thick, regardless of the delicate beauty of each individual flower, they must be thinned in order for the garden to flourish. And the others will one day have to be thinned, which means dying. I guess, honey, that death is the only feasible way to make way, or room, for new life? And a hunter knows this more intimately than those who choose not to hunt.”
“Poppa! You have tears in your eyes, again!”
“Those aren’t tears, Erika. Now go over there to the rack and pick out a rifle. Try that little one, with the blonde stock. It’s a 7mm-08 and old Pop thinned a few flowers with that one!”
“Okay, Poppa, I’ll try out the rifle, but I may never hunt or kill a deer!”
“I know, honey, I know…”
“I love you very, very much, Pop.”
And I love you, Erika. More than you’ll ever realize….