The Pheasant Hunt
(Photo stolen from this guy)
One of the great joys in life is introducing your children to everybody you've ever known, especially if you are related to them. "This is your first cousin twice removed -- no, wait, THREE TIMES removed. What was I thinking?" Nuggets of information like that have pretty much NO impact on kids, while the phrase "glows in the dark" can set them all adither.
Twice in the last week I have had the pleasure of informing my glow-in-the-dark daughters that they were related to pretty much every person in the room. The first time was at a family baby shower for the newest member of our extended family, baby Caydance, and every person in the room was family. "Really? Everybody?" asked Smedley.
"Yup," I said, then launched into an explanation of related "by marriage," and watched her eyeballs glaze over. "Uh, never mind," I relented, "You're related to everybody in the room."
Saturday marked the second family get-together in a week. My cousin Mike lives two miles away, and he and his wife Chris hosted a pheasant hunt at their ranch this weekend. Once upon a time it all happened at our house, on our ranch, but over the years our indigenous pheasant population thinned out and made the hunt somewhat bleak. With no birds to bag, a pheasant hunt became just an excuse to get a bunch of guys and labradors together, running around, drinking beer and having the time of their lives. Well, I'm not sure that the labradors drank any beer (but I'm not sure they didn't).
Not that these hunters aren't serious, mind you, or that they don't know their way around a gun, because they are, and they do. The men from that half of my family are born with an inclination to bring home the proverbial bacon, to hunt for food the way our ancestors used to. The beer is kind of a side benefit.
The branch of my family from which my genes surely originated would be the Wuss Strain, we of the less virile group -- the Clan of the Grocery Store. Hunting just doesn't happen among my dad's people, other than one long ago, very unfortunate turkey hunt, which shall remain unmentioned. My brothers were both drawn to the romance of the hunt, but it didn't really stick. I'm afraid we are Safeway people, to the core.
That doesn't stop me from enjoying a good pheasant hunt, however. A good pheasant hunt always includes lots of chips and salsa, homemade cookies, barrel-smoked meats, beer and wine. Any birds actually meeting their demise in the spectacle are cleaned and plucked and put on ice, while we all sit down to a dinner of smoked beef. Family members engage in the oral tradition of storytelling (which is pretty much Creative B.S.ing). This can last for hours.
This weekend the weather was picture postcard perfect -- warm and dry, with strong sunshine and no wind. The hunters were not hugely successful, but no one cared. The conversation was good, the mood high . . . great company, tasty vittles -- really, how could anything improve on the day?
Well, I suppose the pheasants could have glowed in the dark . . .