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'Hunting is cruel sport? Nonsense,' said a hunter to a bird. 'I pit my skill against your cunning and mobility. It is a fair game.'
'Perhaps,' replied the bird. 'But it is a game I wish not to play, fair or otherwise.'
'But why?' queried the hunter.
'Consider the final stake,' reasoned the bird. 'If I win, you lose, at most, an insignificant speck of your pride. But if you win....' The bird's voice quaked and his eyes filled with tears. 'I have a wife and children...' The bird put his beak in his wings and sobbed heavy sobs.
The hunter raised his gun and fired both barrels, leaving only a cloud of feathers and a crimson mist where the bird had been.
The hunter so grieved to see the bird suffer that it was most humane of him to put it out of its profound misery.
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