I remember bird heads in Texas. I remember looking on with unquestioning disregard as my sister and my cousins ran about the placid fields with those grotesque flapping heads.  As if they were some sort of macabre puppeteers with some unearthly chirping decapitated ventriloquist's dummies. 

But maybe me too. Probably me too. I don't fully remember it all to be sure...

Cut clean off.  I know that much.  Just severed heads.  Mouths gaping, tongues lulling, yet then closed shut by such a mechanism of some gnarly and dangling sinew manually pulled up and then down by a cackling child.

Just heads. Severed bird heads. Those undead beaks and blackened eyes and bloody necks...   opening and closing to the amusement of my whole family.

Earlier this day I was taken out on my first hunt.  Taken out to hunt quail. With camouflage and shotguns and hounds.  So the heads were probably quail heads.

I remember that probable quail. Those probable quail.  I will always remember them.  And their blood on my hands.

Those toy heads.  Innocent toys for innocent children.   Innocence derived from ignorance.   Simply tug the  viscera and witness witness the wisdom of the ages.

From those heads. Those severed heads.  Different colors and sizes and different shapes.  Beaks and eyes and tendrils too.

I remember. I remember the bird heads.  Bird heads in Texas.

And they whisper...  "Remember"