Natural Born Killers

Kids kill things

Kids kill things. Maybe not all kids, but a fair portion. Killing things, it’s experimental. Some like it. It’s educational. Life, death, power, cruelty. At some point the opportunity to kill will arise and a lot of kids will kill. Boys did more killing than girls, a reflection of the larger world. Maybe now things have changed, maybe girls kill as much, maybe more, equal rights. I was a kid who killed. Big deal. We all killed. Or most of us. Some kids liked to kill. Natural born killers. I didn’t like it too much. Except horseflies. I’d kill those sonofabitches all day.

First, I remember being a witness to a killing. We lived on a dead end street and beyond the turnaround was a slope down to pit of gravel and dirt, a scar of abandoned construction in the process of being reclaimed to the wild. There was a pond there most of the year. Mid summer it would be mostly mud and tall grass where many frogs resided. One day this kid caught a frog and said “ I’m gonna shove some firecrackers in its mouth and blow him up”. Then that’s what he did. Jammed some crackers in froggy’s maw, lit them, and blew him the fuck up.

It wasn’t great. I didn’t like it. Then he wanted me to do it, threw down the gauntlet. Bullies and sadists are weird. Because he wanted me to do it the other kids wanted me to do it. Yah, yah, do it, do it they chanted. Zero to Lord of the Flies in five seconds. I think the kid had crippled that frog before he rammed the firecrackers in. So it didn’t hop away. There was some sadistic shit going down that hot summer day on the dead end turnaround. I didn’t see him break the frog’s legs but this kid was all in. He did it. The frog would have hopped outta there otherwise. Maybe found somewhere private to blow up. Maybe even managed to expel the deadly crackers. I didn’t want to break a frog’s legs, ram firecrackers down it’s throat, light them and watch it explode. So I said I had another idea. Even though I didn’t, I’d figure it out while trying to catch a frog.

It didn’t take me too long to catch a frog. I was an adept frog catcher. I liked frogs. I liked the chase, the capture, loved the sensation of their cool slippery skin on mine, feeling them breathe in my cupped hands, and watching them leap, legs akimbo when released.

“What are you gonna do?” said Captain Sadistic. “Yah what are you gonna do?” chimed the other kids. We were standing on an area of flattish exposed rock, tan coloured, the early afternoon sun blazing down. Yah, what am I going to do I was thinking.

“I’m gonna throw it up in the air!” I announced with phony bravado, “it’ll land on this rock and SPLAT!” And before the skeptical muttering of the death squad could reach critical mass, I flung the frog as high into the air as I could and it came down on the rock. It didn’t go SPLAT and it didn’t go THUD, rather some hybrid of the two. SPLUD. It was on it’s back, white underbelly reflecting brightly in the early afternoon sun. Its splayed back legs twitched a few times and a delicate thread of scarlet blood trickled from its mouth.

“Whoa cool!” a kid exclaimed. Everyone in a circle looking down on the hapless frog.

Captain Sadistic was unimpressed. A complex stew of feelings bubbled inside me. None of the feelings were “like wow that was so great.” I wasn’t a natural born killer.

Killing. It was good for the kid economy. The Alberta government paid a bounty on gopher tails and savvy skilled hunters could get rich, enough lucre to buy all the Dr. Pepper and Pixie Stix a person could stomach. Leg hold traps, pellet guns, or .22’s were weapons of choice. Gunless, trapless kids would make a snare out of twine, lay the loop over the opening of the gopher hole, and lie in wait to entrap the rodent menace. Trapped live gophers opened up the world of recreational torture and acts of casual cruelty. Huzzah.

I guess some kids liked to kill in private, like the mysterious Cat Killer. For a few months people’s cats were turning up dead. Sadistically executed, nailed to fences, suffocated in garbage bags. Garrett Brockford’s handsome grey tomcat Alex - an affectionate athletic fellow and accomplished hunter of rodents and birds - went missing. His Dad discovered him drowned in a ditch. A mixture of fear and outrage gripped the town. Theories ignited and fizzled, heated accusations were flung hither and thither. I don’t remember if the kid got caught or it just suddenly stopped. Or maybe it wasn’t one kid, one Cat Killer. A duo, a team, a gang of killers. A trend, a craze, a killing craze. Who knows.

A lot of killing was done in gangs, a group activity. I got invited to go out to a guy’s farm to kill mice. I’m not sure if “invited” is the correct term, maybe drafted, but nevertheless a troop of us armed with hockey sticks rode out on bicycles to Gary Lovick’s farm. There was a functional aspect to the summoning of this death squad. The barn must be rid of mice. I don’t remember why, farm economics may have been at play. The mice were gnawing the foundation of the economy, troops were deployed.

The killing methodology involved upending a bale of hay to flush the demon mice, then pursuing them with the goal of beating them to death with hockey sticks. This was not an efficient way to exterminate rodents, it was intended to be a recreational activity. Like aquafit except with hockey sticks, a barn, and rodent hunt. The barn rung with shouts of excitement and laughter, the joy and triumph of bludgeoning the infernal rodents. I joined in but I can’t remember if I killed any mice. I remember thinking this isn’t for me.

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