Bird Heaven

The boy’s mother stood in the kitchen gazing out the window, her mind deep in

thought. She watched her son in the distance, walking through the trees holding

his air rifle as he looked for birds to shoot. She wished she could understand what

was going on inside her son’s head, he was such a good kid with a huge loving

heart but lately he had become obsessed with hunting birds.


She and his father had bought him an air rifle about a year ago. His father had

one when he was a kid and they thought it would be a good way of getting their son

out of the house. They had taught him how to be safe with the air rifle and knew he

was responsible enough not to harm himself or others. But the rifle ended up hardly

ever being used and they had almost forgotten that he had it. She had put it down

to his loving heart and the fact that he did not want to harm any creature and

especially on purpose.


He had a pet bird in his room, a cockatiel that they had bought years ago and

kept in their lounge, but it became so noisy that she could no longer stand it and

was planning to give it away until her son put up such a protest that they decided

he could have it. After that the bird stayed in his room where the noise wouldn’t get

to her. He really loved that bird but about 4 weeks ago the bird suddenly died as

pets do, he was really upset to begin with but got over it learning that death was a

part of life.


She had to admit to herself that she didn’t think it would be very easy to

actually kill anything with the air rifle but in the past weeks he had become an

excellent shot with it. She could understand it if it was just a phase or something

that he was going through but he seemed to spend every moment he could out

there hunting, even when it was too dark to really see he would still be out there

until either her or his father spent a good ten minutes calling him back.


Suddenly she was shocked back into reality by the phone ringing, as she went

to answer it she decided she would get his father to have a talk with him that night,

just to make sure everything is okay and with that she answered the phone.


That night after they had tea the boy went to his room and his father followed

him so that he could speak with him. The boy sat at his desk and looked like he

was doing his home work. His father wasn’t too good at having heart to heart talks

but had been convinced that it was a good idea by the boy’s mother. He done his

best in telling the boy that they where a bit worried about how much time he was

out hunting birds and asked why he had suddenly become so interested in it. The

boy responded defensively telling his dad that he just did and what’s the problem,

they had bought the air rifle for him and his dad had even shown him how to use it.

The father knew this was an excellent point but it didn’t explain the sudden interest

and the amount of time his son was putting into it.


He carried on talking to his son hoping that he could break through the boy’s

defense and before long he did. His son turned to him and he noticed that his son

had tears rolling down his face. This instantly put a lump in his father’s throat which

he had to quickly swallow down. His son told him that he wanted to build a large

aviary and showed his father what was on his desk, it was a drawing of a big shed

type building and there was also a list of all sorts of different birds. His son told him

that he felt it was unfair that his bird spent its entire lifetime trapped inside a cage,

alone and not able to spread its wings and fly. He told his dad how he was going to

build this aviary himself and that he was going to buy 2 of all the birds so they

would all have a friend. He was going to put them all together in this aviary so that

his bird would be able to fly and be around other birds, but his bird died before this

could become a reality.


This all came as a bit of a shock to his father, he had no idea of these plans

but he found it strange how his son could show such caring ness but then do the

opposite and kill other birds so he asked his son why. His son looked at him with

reluctance but finally spoke, he said that he doesn’t know what happens to birds

once they die but perhaps they do go to some sort of bird heaven. If that was

possible then the only way he could make it up to his bird was to make sure his

bird had as many friends as possible. The more birds that he killed the more

friends his bird would have in bird heaven