Hazards of the Trade

In just about every good thing there is at least one hazard connected to it. 

Our first responders, our police, our firemen and soldiers are our heroes but with their trade comes hazards. 

Too many are injured or even die in the line of duty. 

Even common domesticated occupations like carpenters, electricians know they are at risk because everything good has hazards of the trade. 

About a year ago, we installed glass windows on our enclosed carport sitting area making it a sunroom that is climate controlled and can serve as a greenhouse for my wife's plants during winter months. 

It adds a really nice place to entertain guests and is a wonderful place to sit and drink a cup of coffee and enjoy being outside and still be in a comfortable sitting. cool in the summer and warm in the winter. 

I would have never considered our comfy sunroom presenting any kind of hazard until Sunday morning as my wife was drinking coffee and saw a bluebird fly into one of the large glass windows and plummet to the ground. 

She came and told me, and we both went out to check on the little guy and there it sat on the paver brick under the window it had flown into. 

You could tell it was very much alive but had knocked itself addled by the blow.  

So we just backed away and left it alone. 

We soon left for Sunday School and upon our return the bird apparently had regained its senses and flew away. 

To say I was relieved was an understatement because I hate to see anything suffer from my doings like an errant shot on a deer like I had made the week before and mortally wounded the small buck. 

It was standing in the brush and as it turned to leave, I took the shot and even though it was a broadsided shot apparently a limb deflected my arrow just enough to make it an errant one. 

I say mortally wounded because it had lost too much blood when I tried to track it down and jumped it up only to see it disappear into the thick brush and after an hour of searching in the 90 plus degree heat, I abandoned my search.  

The broadhead on my bolt shot from the crossbow at 25 steps proved to be too much to hope for the small buck to recover, judging by the amount of blood where it had laid down until I jumped it up to run off. 

That's another hazard of the trade, that of bow hunting. 

Not like a deer rifle that is somewhat forgiving in an errant shot as most times just the shock effect alone of the slug disables the deer, one from a bow or crossbow has to be just about perfect to insure an ethical kill. 

Had the blue bird not lived to fly another day, I would be sickened in heart twice. 

Regardless if it is a whitetail deer left in a thicket to be wasted and die an agonizing death from an errant shot or a little bluebird not seeing the invisible glass with its tiny eyes I had installed, both are true hazards of the trade. 

Hopefully all future deer I aim at are taken in a quick ethical well-placed shot. 

And hopefully all little birds will be spared a head on collision with the glass windows of our sunroom. 

Both hazards of the trade. 

God bless you and God bless America.