Bye Bye Birdy

I have a sneaky suspicion that my friends shot and killed birds. They would never do it in front of me or admit to it (I’d go mental and they knew it), but I’m sure they did take out the occasional feathered friend.
I came surprisingly close myself, once. I had tracked the bird and had it centred perfectly in the sights (I had no idea what species of bird it was or whether it was male or female – my generation don’t seem to know these things – though my mam or dad could have probably told me at the drop of a hat). I felt a thrill that I had kept the gun trained on the bird as it hopped its way along the tree branches and part of me wanted to see if my aim was as good as I thought it was.
“Go on”, whispered a voice in my head. “Just go ahead and do it. Everyone else does”.
That voice has tipped me over the edge of indecision into making so many mistakes in my lifetime, but I’m glad to say this wasn’t one of those times.
In the end it came down to respect for life (not how cute the ickle birdy wirdy was). What right did I have to kill the bird? None whatsoever, so I lowered the rifle and watched him (or her) sit in the sun and ruffle his feathers.
Then my mate came along and shot him.