Non-Harming

January 11, 2018

 

I wonder what the neighbors think when they see me
outside with the BB gun shooting at the pigeons
on our roof. I gave them a copy of my anthology,
The Poetry of Impermanence, Mindfulness, and Joy,
and the introduction makes me sound like
a person who probably wouldn’t be shooting
at pigeons, even if only with a BB gun,
which doesn’t really hurt them (I tell myself)
but simply encourages them to find
someplace else to deposit their smeary droppings
that threaten to turn one side of our house
into a bad Jackson Pollock painting.
“Honey, come look at this—isn’t that
the mindfulness guy out there with a gun,
shooting at his own house?” I’m well aware
of the irony, but life’s like that, isn’t it?
A contradiction wrapped in an absurdity, etc.
Still, plunking pigeons with a BB gun
might not fall afoul of the injunction
to not cause harm. (I thought about shooting
myself in the foot just to see how much
it hurt but decided against it). I tried
placing scary-looking plastic owls strategically
around the roof but the pigeons laughed at that.
I tried an electronic device that sent out
a kind of sub-audible (to humans) shrieking,
imitative of a bird of prey, but they didn’t fall for that
either. I always thought pigeons were dumb,
but now I’m not so sure. They’ve outsmarted me,
so far, not that that’s any great accomplishment,
moving from one side of the roof to the other,
where the angle for firing is not so good,
and where the homeowner
is exposed, even in this early morning half-light,
to the watchful eyes of the neighbors.

 

–from Dharma Talk; first published in The Gettysburg Review