Four Days, Two Theories: Theory #2

Forty two years ago I was a guard at the stockade at Fort Benning Georgia. A prisoner came in named Brown. He was a jerk. Always causing trouble and fighting with the guards. A few of us were kicking around the idea of some serious wall to wall counseling. Our guard commander Lang came in and said we couldn't touch him. He said Brown probably saved his life in Nam. He said the village they were protecting had a hill above it and a sniper would come out of a cave each day around 3pm and fire three rounds into the village. Lang said he was getting ready to take a squad up the hill and eliminate the sniper and Brown told him not to. Brown said this guy comes out at 3pm every day, we all know he's coming out, takes three shots, never hits anybody, and goes back in. He's just doing his job and he's not good at it. You go up there and kill this guy and they'll replace him with somebody that can shoot and we'll start losing people."

I have five or six birds of prey that come most every day around the same time. There are so many songbirds and White-tailed antelope squirrels here with their warning system it's a rare day when a bird of prey even gets close to taking one of the little people. I haven't seen a close call except the American Kestrel who shows up sporadically in six to eight months. In two years I've seen two birds taken and found remnants of a couple more and they were pretty much all in the early days. The little people have a system and it's working for them with no or very few losses. I go out and drive the birds of prey off, they'll adjust or new ones will show up. They'll start working together or changing their methods. It took me 42 years to understand that day in Viet Nam but I finally got it.