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They went about their business cackling and fluttering about. The leaves of the Maples seemed to be outnumbered by the birds in the trees. Darts up. An arc, and back to earth.
Dart up. Back to earth. Reload. As my enthusiasm grew, so did the time from load to re-load decrease. We felt like warriors bent on destruction of these intruders. As much as I appreciated nature, this was different. We were obsessed. Get rid of these pests so others may prosper.

As I became more and more excited so did my outlandish attempts to strike at the outer branches of the trees. Perhaps my aim would work better than my mass targeting approach. I shot a missile up into the air at a branch leaning out toward the grassy field. It arched up past the branch into the air, highlighted by the bright summer sun and dark blue sky. Off it went, high into the air, coming down as my brother faced away on his individual assignment the dart descending toward him and, horribly, sticking unbeknownst to my dear brother, in the corner of his head. I screamed to watch out!

At first I was horrified. But as he turned to find out what I had been yelling about, dart sticking out of the top of his head, I began to laugh. He turned his head from side to side, the dart flopping lazily on the top of his crown, as I rolled in the grass in laughter at how ridiculous he looked.

Ricky reached up, felt the dart, gently pulling it out as if to remove a pesky insect lodged in his hair. He couldn't help laughing as well. I ran to him to make sure he had survived and luckily, we had overestimated the power of our weapons.

Starlings - no losses. The Dart brothers one minor wound.

Reflecting back over those old times, we still laugh at our experience and times spent in city games.

The Starlings survived, probably multiplied, but never returned to south Chicago in the numbers of that summer. And, we both learned that what could have been a very sad tragedy turned out to be a lesson that hopefully translated to at least a slight modification of games city kids play.

Learn more about this author, Robert Weir.
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