Sport.

Mother's Day. Visited Mom and hung out with Dad, Nana, Brother, Sister and assorted others who stopped in to say hello. Before dinner (Dad made red wine pasta: pasta cooked in entire pot of boiling red wine with spices and other yummies), we all decided to have a walk on the Appalachian Trail.

The AT runs behind our house through a protected marshland and has been, where previously inaccessible, painstakingly constructed into a serpentine 1.5 mile boardwalk that meanders lazily through cattails and tall marsh grasses. There are benches that dot the length of the walk, where one can sit and enjoy the glorious natural surroundings. It is quite literally a breath of fresh air for this city girl, whose only experiences with nature include dodging dog poop, killing occasional waterbugs, planning attacks on the platoons of ants that invade my apartment whenever it rains and strolling along the waterfront, whose trees and parks are copiously obscured by the view across the river.

While we were walking, we encountered a woodpecker, turtles, watersnakes, a muscrat and all sorts of birds I didn't know the names for. It was all so deliciously invigorating.

My mother stopped to chat with a fellow she had apparently seen a few times before. She said hello, and then: "Well, you seem to be doing a lot better today. The last time I saw you, you weren't doing so well." He said yes, smiled, and we all continued on our way. She elaborated on the man's despondency and revealed this fun little tale:

Many locals walk this section of the AT on a regular basis, my mother and this man being two of them. In addition to the above wildlife, they have been witness to some sensational sightings. Bears are a common spectacle, hawks, herons, someone reported seeing a cougar; I was fortunate enought to see a bobcat. At least I think it was a bobcat. My mother, along with this man and some others, would periodically catch sight of a spectacular buck, who apparently liked to hang out in the small crags above the trail.

One fine morning, as my mother was readying herself for school, she heard a rally of gunshots coming from the woods behind the house, in the general vicinity of where that majestic animal had been spotted. She ran out and started yelling at the top of her lungs: "STOP IT, YOU PIGS!!!"

They didn't stop it.

Later that afternoon, she walked down to the AT to find the grisly evidence of that morning: the entire length of the boardwalk was painted in the buck's thick blood, undoubtedly where the hunters had dragged it from the woods. Bits of entrails and other assortments of gore were littered along the horrific track of blood, indicating that not only was this animal hunted and killed, but as my mother suspected (considering the number of shots she heard), was in fact, and quite literally, blown to bits. It was not a pleasant discovery. Many of the people who had been fortunate enough to witness this creature in the wild were crying, including the man who seemed "much better today."

It seemed beyond sport. Why hunting is actually considered a sport is beyond me and only solidifies my belief that most of us are primitive, sadistic bastards who revel in destruction. (Case in point: we elected a president whose legacy will be the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people, and this fact doesn't seem to be setting off any urgent alarms among us.)

Back to the buck. This killing was not sport. Ignoring the fact that they were hunting a few hundred yards from a residential neighborhood, they would never have been there in the first place had they not previously known exactly where to go. The act was not only cruel butchery, but was obviously committed by a bunch of milquetoasts who were incapable of the actual sport aspect of hunting.

I hope they all get drunk and shoot themselves in places that really hurt. Or at the very least, die, so there might be a few less witless assholes on this planet.