Last night I was chatting online with a friend and a topic came up that haunts me. Some things just need to be told no matter how painful they may be. I was lying in bed early this morning, about 3:30 am and tears were running down my cheeks like they have so many times through the years.
The day that changed my life forever takes me back in time to almost fifty nine years ago. I was a little boy of seven years old. I can still remember it like it was yesterday. A sunny day that started out so well. I had no idea how that day would change and haunt me for the rest of my life. I don't know how many times through the years it has made me cry. Sad tears that started in a little boy of seven years old and continues to this day as I approach sixty six.
My brother and I walked to our uncle's house as we often did. I can remember looking out over the corn fields on his forty acre farm. My uncle was an amazing farmer and could grow crops that would make any man proud. On this particular day as we approached him we could see that he was drunk as a skunk. This was frequent with my uncle as he was the town drunk. However, I think I didn't realize how he could be until that day.
We walked up to him and he was weaving back and forth, swearing a blue streak. His little dog, a beagle, had given birth to several puppies just several days before. As my brother and I stood there he reached back underneath his porch and pulled those puppies out one by one. I can remember them looking so cute in my eyes and thinking how they would make someone so happy. Then the horror came. My uncle threw each one of them on the ground and stomped them to death. He was in a drunken rage. I turned my head away but I can still hear the sound to this day of his boot coming down and crushing those little puppies to death.
I had just witnessed something that no child should have to see. I remember running home crying and crying. Those puppies just didn't die that day, so did any respect and love I had for my uncle. It was over, I hated him then and I hate him now. There is no way I could ever forgive him for doing such a horrid act. I talked to him rarely after that and never attended his funeral when he died. That little seven year old boy and this man who is almost sixty six will never forgive him. My uncle was an alcoholic. In the few times I saw him sober he was a kind man. The alcohol changed him into a monster. Even to this day if I see a drunk on TV, like Otis Campbell on the Andy Griffith Show my mind will flash back to that day.
That day haunts me something fierce. It will haunt me until the day I die. I guess if anything good came out of that day it is my love for animals. I was lying in bed this morning with tears in my eyes and rolled over to look at my dog Cookie sleeping in her bed. I did get a smile as I thought to myself, don't worry honey. No one is every going to hurt you again. I won't let them.
Copyright Larry W. Fish 2014
Shared tears from a fellow animal lover, from a 10 Bengal cat household! I was saddened again yesterday when I saw a tiny baby fox hit by a car, people class them as vermin over here and have no love or respect for these beautiful animals and seem to get sick pleasure from using them as target practice and bait for hunting, so sad the depravities of the human race.
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