“Here, pretty bird,” the boy called out to a small sparrow that chirped happily as it hopped along the freshly mowed green grass, still wet with morning dew. The boy lunged towards the jovial critter when he decided he was close enough to attempt to capture it. He landed as if he were tackling a football player like on the games he used to watch with his dad before his father shot himself. His mother didn't like him watching football, she called it overly violent. He never told his mother he thought she overly violent, increasingly so ever since two years ago when in the wake of her husband's death she had began to drink heavily. Today he wore a bruise across his face from where his mother had slapped him last night for asking her if she could maybe not drink so much. As he held his new friend in his hands he noticed that he wasn't the only bruised creature in his backyard. The reason why the sparrow wasn't sitting in the tree with his brethren seemed to stem from some wing injury the sparrow had sustained. The boy cooed at the sparrow to sooth it, the sparrow continued to flap as if he tried to escape but the boy would not release his grip. He hocked up as much spit as his mouth would allow and let it dribble down onto the bird's beak. He did it again but this time the sparrow tilted his beak up and waited for the meal of mucous. The bird ceased flapping and now that the boy had fed him he seemed to be alright with sitting in his hands, which was exactly what the boy wanted.
The boy walked over to the picnic table in the middle of his backyard and set the sparrow down. He quickly grabbed a five gallon bucket that he had set there beforehand for this exact occasion and placed it over trapped the bird.
He walked back into his house and past his unconscious mother on the couch, which didn't surprise him, the empty bottle of vodka that lay on the floor next to her told him all he needed to know, that she would be asleep for a few hours yet. The television was on some shopping network, which also didn't surprise him. Lately his mother had taken to buying anything that caught her fancy on that station, she'd marvel over it for about a week before it ended up in the cluttered closet that the boy now made his way toward.
He pulled open the closet door careful to not disturb his mother, he yanked on his father's golf club bag, which caused a whole avalanche of forgotten treasures to come cascading down with a ruckus. He quickly glanced back at his mother fearful that he had disturbed her drunken slumber, but she made no move or sound to indicate that she had heard the noise. He pulled out his father's seven iron and laid it on the floor, then he did his best to shove all the junk his mom had bought back into the closet and closed it. He picked up the golf club and walked past his mother with only the briefest of pauses to shake his head at her. For a split second the image of bringing down the seven iron with all his force on his mother's skull played out in his head, but he shook it off. He had other work to do.
He walked back outside and to the picnic table and the five gallon bucket that held his feathered prisoner. He pulled the bucket off and quickly grabbed the sparrow with the hand he didn't hold the club in. The bird chirped when he saw him as if to ask if he would be fed again. The boy took a couple steps away from the picnic table, he would need room for this. He dropped the bird and kicked it with his boot, not as hard as he could have, he didn't want to kill it, only to knock it unconscious. The swallow didn't move, but the boy could see it's tiny chest moving up and down.
He cocked the golf club back and swung as hard as he could, shredding the sparrow into bits that scattered across the dewy grass like tiny organic snowflakes. Here lay a small stretch of the creature's intestines, here was an unidentifiable grey organ, but the thing that made the boy shiver with glee was the small pink heart no bigger then the eraser on a pencil, no longer beating.
He wiped the sweat from his forehead with the sleeve of his shirt, then he wiped the golf club off on the grass as best he could. Now that it was over he felt a mixture of feelings. He was elated that the task was done, yet sad that it was over. He began to think of his next project, which was how he thought of what he did. He had come a long way from frying ants with a magnifying glass, once that no longer satisfied him he had microwaved his friend's gerbil, which had been great. Now that the sparrow was done, he decided it was time to move on to something larger.

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