Harry does something illegal with a pheasant.

After a hard day on the market I decide to drive down to Stathern Stores for a bottle of Merlot. It's a lovely evening with pretty clouds turning amber over Nottingham. A lovely evening for a cock pheasant to go for a walk, too, and show off his pretty feathers. At the crest of Stathern Hill the pheasant, no doubt made reckless by the spring surge of hormones, charges across the road. Thunk! I hit him. I stop. He's not dead. His wings are fluttering furiously, but he can't fly. He has one eye, missing. Blood drips from his beak. He's damaged beyond repair. Maimed.

It's my clear duty to dispatch him. I try to neck him as I would a chicken, but his neck seems to be different from that of a chicken's, more flexible. I twist and yank his head. But he remains alive. The one eye looks at me. I try stamping on his head. This doesn't work either as his head sinks into the damp turf of the verge. Rather than ending his suffering I am intensifying it. The one eye looks at me. I am pheasant bane, pheasant nemesis. I feel a pang of horror. This pheasant who, a few minutes ago was strutting about so full of himself, is having a very, very bad day. And it's my fault.

More than ever it's important to give him the coup de grace. I pick up an a stick, position it over his neck and stamp hard. There's a brief spasm of nerves and he goes still. Dead. I feel relieved. I drop him in the foot well of the car and take him home. The next day Sharon's Dad butchers him and we make a very tasty pheasant casserole. So he didn't die in vain.

Later, up the pub, when I tell people about the incident, they delight in telling me what I did was illegal. If you hit a pheasant you can't pick it up but the bloke behind can. And don't show any sympathy for the pheasant.

Me? I even dream about the damn thing. A couple of nights later a giant game bird with a piece of flint in its beak attacks Sharon. I have to fight it off. Revenge of the birds? What does it all mean?