Picking Olives
Chapter 7 from Bill Owens' upcoming book "Chicken Heads"
After school, with time on my hands, I would get my BB gun and spend a couple of hours killing sparrows. My best one-day kill record was twenty-two sparrows. I did shoot at robins. These birds somehow knew to fly away from a kid with a BB gun. So, I spent most of my time just killing the dumb, ordinary house sparrows.
All the families living along Larkspur Lane had dogs and cats. The cats were outdoor cats, and at night, they roamed the neighborhood looking for food. I’m sure numerous cats came to our yard and ate the sparrows I had shot early that afternoon.
One day, I had a money-making idea. I asked my mom if I could borrow the family’s gun, a twenty-two.
On a small piece of paper, I had written: “I will kill your cat for 25 cents. And on the back of the paper, I wrote: “For 25 cents more, I’ll bury it”. I also thought kittens should be half-price.
Mom said she didn’t want me walking around the neighborhood with a loaded gun, asking people if they wanted me to kill their cat. “It’s not a good idea,” she said, “People aren’t going to pay you to do something that they can do themselves.”
So, at the young age of fourteen, I was unable to satisfy my entrepreneurial urge to make money.
That fall, I made seven dollars picking olives. When you think about it, I would have to kill and bury fourteen cats to make seven dollars.
Mom was right. “Killing cats for money was a bad idea.”
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