We Only Shoot the Things We Love

A male wood duck. Image credit: “Brautente 2008-03-21 065” by BS Thurner Hof – Own work. Licensed under GFDL via Wikimedia Commons.

Dating horror stories – so miserable at the time but so fun to reminisce about after the dust has settled. And so fun to read. Here’s my contribution.

I met a man and, after a few weeks, visited his house for the first time. His place as well-cared for and impressive – until I got to the den. The walls were covered with taxidermied ducks. Now, I’m okay with hunting. I realize that meat needs to come from somewhere, and that hunting is sort of a dying art. But I soon discovered my date was hunting for a whole ‘nother reason.

His reason came to light when I couldn’t help but comment on the wood duck he had among his collection. Now, male wood ducks are like the Mr. Universe of the duck world. As you can see from the photo, they’re beautiful. They’re also rather rare in these parts. They nest in large holes in trees on the water. They don’t hurt anybody. And as faithful readers of my blog know, I have a thing for birds.

I made some sort of comment like – “Oh, and you’ve got a wood duck. They’re so beautiful….”

“That’s why I shot it,” he said.

Immediately, an irrational part of my woman dater’s brain thought: If this is what he does to things he finds beautiful, what will he do to things he loves? Heat-seeking missiles, maybe bombs? It reminded me of a quote from the poem by Oscar Wilde (“The Ballad of Reading Gaol”), “For each man kills the thing he loves…”

Of course, I know that there’s a big difference between killing a duck and killing a human, but try telling that to my primitive brain.

That relationship didn’t go very far.