RANDOM REMINDER

Press, Volume CI, Issue 29897, 10 August 1962, Page 20

RANDOM REMINDER

SHOT AND SHELL

Birthdays are very often minor affairs, sometimes forgotten, sometimes overlooked until the last moment, only very occasionally seen as an important fixture in the family calendar, except for those aged from five to 10, 21, or 100. But now and then, a birthday becomes really memorable, because of a particularly treasured gift, or some odd circumstance, such as Aunt Matilda deciding to start twisting, after having been under the misapprehension that the fruit punch was without additives. There is a Canterbury man, on a farm, who will remember his last birth-

day with particular clarity. After consulting with his wife, he agreed that it would be nice if he could have a rifle, to knock over a rabbit or two; he had suggested that would be an appropriate gift at the start of the discussion and had, indeed, been looking through the sporting goods shops a couple of weeks before that. But his wife was one of those who thought that the breadwinners birthday should be properly recognised, so she bought a turkey, planning to make It the chief contribution to a meal they would remember. It was alive when it came, and it was put into a fowl pen. But the turkey still had its wings,

and it very soon discovered that there uas no roof to the pen. Desperate excitement. The turkey rose heavily, like something off a launching pad at Cape Canaveral, and took to a tree. The man, urged on by his excited family, took to his rifle, his gift. He slew his quarry, after a little while. But his elation at this display of marksmanship was short-lived. Two of his children, plying their knives and forks with particular enthusiasm when the turkey was ultimately served, were under the impression that their mother had ireated the bird like a Christmas pudding, and stuffed it full of three* pcnces.