Imagine my surprise

The bird season opened on an unsettling note.

With my obituary.

I’d gone to bed early and missed the text message my friend David sent later that evening. But when I woke at 5 a.m. and glanced at my phone to check the time, I saw it. Under the heading of obituaries was a picture of me.

David, the gravedigger in town, regularly checks the online version of the local paper, for upcoming work. He’d spotted my mug on the obits page, sent condolences in a text to my wife, and called dibs on my semiautomatic shotgun.

I considered going back to bed.

Sleep, however, was out of the question. I was wide awake and trying to come to terms with my untimely demise.

Squinting a bit and adjusting my bifocals I saw that the text accompanying the photo was actually a recent column I’d written. Someone had mistakenly placed it in the obituary section.

I was still alive, although at that hour of the morning I often have doubts. There was certainly no one up to verify it. Barb was sound asleep. It was just me and the dogs, and I don’t think they’d care if I was a ghost as long as they could still go hunting.

Alone in the cab of the pickup, driving south of town through the lingering smoke of distant wildfires, I half expected to hear Rod Serling’s voice introduce me in an upcoming episode of Twilight Zone.

“Parker Heinlein thinks this is just another opening day of bird season, but he’ll soon find out it’s different from all the others.”

I shot like a dead man that morning, missing nearly every bird that flew.

And there were lots of birds.

I finally dropped a sharptail at 7:34 a.m. Until that bird hit the ground I felt as if I was stuck in purgatory, neither dead or alive. But when I knelt to take the bird from Jem, my knees complained. Surely, I thought, they wouldn’t hurt so much if I was dead.

That evening, at halftime of the high school football game, I saw the editor of the local paper and told him what had happened. He apologized, and said he’d move the column off the obituary page.

I told him that wasn’t necessary.

Few folks get the luxury of previewing their own obituary. I’d choose a different photo of myself next time, but not the date. It was memorable way to celebrate the opening of bird season.

And sure, the gravedigger can have dibs on my semiauto.

Parker Heinlein is at

[email protected].