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Honolulu Lite
Charles Memminger
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A bird in the night worth a fright
(PART I - PART II)
WHO KNOWS what evil lurks in the hearts of men? As I stood on my deck at 3 in the morning, pointing my semiautomatic air rifle into the black night during the recent period generally referred to as "the holidays," I realized that I knew the answer to that question. Me and the Shadow knew what evil lurks in the heart of men.
Because, if not evil, something very dark was lurking in my heart as I waited for that blasted feral rooster to dare crow again. For nights he had been tormenting my wife and me, going off like a feather-covered tsunami siren, seemingly inches from our bed, causing me to bolt out of deep sleep, fly up to the ceiling and hang there by my fingernails in sheer panic.
I'm not a violent man, or at least thought I wasn't. But after three nights of no sleep, I had been reduced to a savage animal state and stood armed on the deck, ready to happily take the life of another of God's creatures should the creature make even a peep in the darkness.
I knew there was a certain risk to firing blindly into a darkened hillside at mere noise, it was possibly even criminal, though I knew of no statute barring one from target practice at 3 a.m. on one's own property (for that would be my story should authorities show up). Target practice, officer. The dead rooster? Merely a bit of bad luck for him to be passing by. Heh, heh, heh.
BUT THE rooster was wily and never even rustled a leaf. Having jolted me from unconsciousness to cardiac arrest, his job was done. He slinked off silently while not only evil lurked in my heart, but something like arrhythmia, too.
Something had to be done, though. This hillside wasn't big enough for both of us, and since the wild bird was not contributing to the mortgage payments, I felt I had not only the moral high ground, but the probable backing of the Hawaii Realtors Association.
As the gopher-hunting Bill Murray proved in the movie "Caddy Shack," to get a varmint you have to think like a varmint. And I knew there was no type of fowl on this island -- feral, domesticated or deep-fried -- that could match wits with me. Stroking the barrel of my gun, I snickered quietly in the darkness as a brilliant plan emerged. This rooster's crowing days (and nights) were over.
My thoughts were shattered by an alarming sound from inside: "Come in off that lanai and put that gun away, you crazy person! You're scaring the neighbors!"
To be continued ...
(PART I - PART II)
Charles Memminger, the National Society of Newspaper Columnists' 2004 First Place Award winner for humor writing, appears Sundays, Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays. E-mail
cmemminger@starbulletin.com