Elizabeth Atkinson

I’m the type who scoops up tiny creatures, like spiders and wasps, and deposits them outside on a warm branch. When I go fishing (as I occasionally do in the summer evenings) I shriek if I actually catch one and demand the fish be immediately, but gently, de-gauged.  And yes, I slam on the brakes for squirrels, chipmunks, and leaf formations resembling them.

On the other hand, do I eat animals savagely slaughtered and grotesquely packaged after being caged in horrendous conditions? Yes I do.  I really wish I didn’t, and I try to eat meat as little as possible, but can’t seem to do away with it completely. After all, my patient husband asks for very little which includes an occasional steak from the grill. Plus we have a teen son who would happily survive on beef if he had to choose just one food item.

So how could I possibly even begin to judge someone who hunts animals living freely in the wild?

What does irritate me, however, is hunters who wreck my nice little hike in the woods, especially this time of the year.  Take last weekend, for instance. I arrived in the tiny village in Maine where our cottage is located.  I stopped at the general store to buy some milk and quickly noticed I was the only person not driving a pick-up and wearing camouflage. Ugh. Clearly, it was going to be a big firearms weekend. 

It was pouring that day (due to Hurricane Ida), but still I couldn’t wait to take a long walk as soon as I unpacked my car. I grabbed my favorite neon orange hat (thoughtfully designed by said son when he was 10 yrs old – see photo below), my orange windbreaker, and set off down our deserted dirt road.

Almost immediately I heard several gun shots ring out a little too close, so I turned and headed in the other direction. While the pops continued to go off all around, they were soon muffled and pretty far off in the distance. Until about 20 minutes later when I was making my way toward the main road – a shot cracked through the air. This time I spun 180 degrees and hurried straight home singing loudly…because, as my friend Louise recently pointed out, deer don’t sing.

Later that evening I thought about what it must be like to constantly live in a war zone. The threat of gun shots and missiles and grenades and war crap ALL THE TIME.  For years on end. So bad, you can’t even take a walk…I guess I can put up with hunters a couple months of the year. Most of them stick to designated areas and hunt responsibly. If anything, they remind us of how incredibly lucky we are to live on free and peaceful soil.

And there’s definitely “nothing wrong with that.”