Ain't no Cure for the Summerside Blues

The following story involves blood and gore...and is not for children.

One of the people I will remember the rest of my life is Roger J. Can't call HIM a poser...what you saw was pretty much what you got. Trouble was, you never quite knew what you saw. A son of a fisherman, he grew up hating fish farmers and seals. Fish farms because they raised "weak" fish who were prone to disease, and were the competition. Seals because they destroy fish wholesale. A seal will dive down, find a fish, take a bite out of it, throw away the fish to die, and then hunt down another fish. A lot of fish in his nets had seal bites in them. Fishermen like Roger and his kin would, and DID happily shoot seals who were hovering around their nets looking for a cheap dinner.
Fishing is like farming...you accept death as part of life, and inevitable. It was Roger who used the phrase "Well, you know, you ain't a gonna get outa this life alive y'know". He used to chuckle at people who didn't want to kill a trapped mouse, and would be the one you call if you want to drown unwanted kittens, or kill a fresh caught fish or chicken for your supper. He raised his own rabbits for the table, (along with another feller I'll tell about in a bit), and had an old boat he and his dad had fiberglassed to make seaworthy that he lived on during the summer months.
And it was Spring, about May, and the birds were nestin something awful. Now there is nothing that goes together worse than airplanes and birds! Little avian buggers will have a nest built in the nooks and crannys of your airplane in 4 hours! Which I wouldn't mind so much but the nests tend to interfear with the operation of control surfaces, and can be life threatening. Oh sure, we check, check, and check again, hang stuffed owls up, play high pitched sounds, but the only thing which really works is the poisoned grain. Every airport in the world has trays of poisoned grain out for the varmints which can bring down an airplane.
So the Warrant Officer and Roger were walking around the hanger, Roger with the clipboard, writing down all the things which need to make the hangar Ship Shape and Bristol Fashion. And they found a pigeon which had partaken of the grain, and was dying horribly on the tarmac. The Warrant Officer was an ex Navy "fish head" , and showing a hitherto unsuspected streak of compassion, he asked Roger to put the "poor wee think out a' its misery". I had to dash off at that point to deal with some disaster in the making, and I was no more than 20 yards off when I heard the Warrant screaming awful things about Roger's parentage, his upbringing, and his mental health! Roger looked like he had been into the paint locker, and so later on, I asked him what happened. As best as I can remember it, these were his words.
"Well, you were in on the first part of it. The Warrant asked me if I had ever killed chickens back on the farm. I told him, Of course. You take the neck in between your fingers, and break their necks just behind the head with a little twist. No big deal. Never did a pigeon though. Their necks are really tiny, almost like a string, instead of that big solid neck a chicken has. So when I wrung its neck, the head just came off in my hand! Well THAT was a surprise! The Warrant was looking at me kind of funny, and I held up the head, and discovered that when you sqeeze the sides, the beak will open and close. So I guess out of nervousness, I made like it was a puppet, held it up, and making the beak open and close, said "Hello Warrant, nice to meet you"! Then he went ballistic!
I am still not sure if Roger J. was in fact a poser, but he was really good at giving the impression that he was "something". Just exactly WHAT that something was....I am not sure. But for the rest of my life, I'll remember Roger standing there with blood splashed all over his uniform and holding up a pigeon's head like it was a sock puppet.