A Hunter's Heaven Begins

I hear his truck as the pipes growl onto the drive-way, his feet are making fast action across the concrete carport, and as the storm door bursts open, his long, slender legs strike steps past me and through the house like he’s been set afire. I tried to ask the basic questions: How was your day? What’s the hurry? Where are you headed now? I got muffled replies smothered in shirt-changing, along with the weird sound of clinking coming from his bedroom, a swift breeze as he flew past me again, hollering “I’ll see you later”; and I was alone again.

Several hours later I would exit the back of the house from where I had been showering for bed, hearing faint noises coming from my kitchen. Now everyone in my house knows I am a self-declared scaredy cat, and if they come home and I am not where I can see them, they are to announce their presence so as not to scare the begeezus out of me.  That had not happened, but I always lock down the house when I’m alone, so I could only wonder as I crept softly towards the noise who or what it would be.

A scene right out of Criminal Minds is the first thing my eyes set sight on as I rounded the corner

from the dining room to the kitchen. Lined up on my kitchen counter next to the sink are round hunks, of what appeared to be, red raw-looking meat;  standing next to that sight, is my youngest son still dressed in the camo gear he left in, standing over the sink with running water, placing one hunk next to another as he washed them off.

My face is scrunched in that crazy-looking face that weak-stomached people have when looking at raw body parts as I ask, “What IS that, and why are you doing that here in my kitchen sink?”  Now I asked “what” it was he was cleaning while my over-imaginative mind was hoping it wasn’t a “who”.  Because those red, round pieces of raw meat looked like they could belong to a human just as much as they could have belonged to an animal.

I don’t know what you think you eat from a Dove, but it seems  all that most people eat is the breast; which is what I had been looking at: 13 teeny tiny dove breasts that looked about the size of chicken livers you see in the grocery store; packaged up, not on your kitchen bar.

Hunting season is upon the Mims home again. Break out the bullets and the bleach by the gallon to clean off my counter tops, sinks, and utensils. Until the big hunt of deer begins in November for Florida, everything else under the sun and in-season doesn’t stand a chance. One day it’s dove, the next it’s squirrel; my son’s bedroom looks like a hunting camp full of gear and guns. Fair Game = Fair Rule in our home: you kill it, you eat it.