Take me back home, al!These were my thoughts that I originally sent out via e-mail after I returned from the rescue effort at Hegins in 1996. However, one of the most moving essays I've ever seen concerning Hegins was written by Hillary Morris.
The night before, at the dinner, we were asked, "how many are here for the first time?" Most everyone in the room raised his/her hand. Was this a sign of how bad Hegins really was? Few volunteers returned? Or did they show up on the day of the event itself?
And yet another bad sign...normally, at animal rights and vegetarian events, I saw a wide ethnic representation--this group was predominately white. This said a lot about the "element" that supported the Shoot.
After the dinner, we went to our training meetings. I was learning about being a peacekeeper. And...we were handed a set of "guidelines"--the scary thing was that these guidelines made it sound like we were about to deal with extremely vicious wild animals, not humans!
The next morning, before dawn, we headed out in a caravan of forty or fifty assorted cars, trucks and vans, a many wheeled centipede down the interstate. The radio stations faded as we got deeper into the mountains...then, Exit 34, our exit from the highway into a fog filled valley...and Hegins.
We had our last moment briefings. Afterwards, some of us were still lingering outside the park, other were already inside, when I heard loud applause and cheering. There, on killing field #1, was a group of six activists laying on the ground, chained together at their necks in the "human octopus"! Word spread quickly that there was another such group between killing fields #5 and #6. The event hadn't even started and already some activists had partially shut down the event!
Standing in the sun, watching the CD from our "safe" area, was one thing, being inside the park was another. Shortly after entering the park, under the shade of the trees, I felt like I was plunged into darkness, hearing the "shoot" crowd shouting things like "saw their heads off!" and "save a pigeon, shoot a protester!" (the latter was said frequently throughout the day).
I took the advice of one of the leaders of the peacekeepers who told us first-timers to spend about five or ten minutes watching what was happening on the field, just to "get it over with"--see the actual carnage so that we could get on with our jobs (or, get out!--who among us would think badly of anyone who couldn't "handle" such violence?). The pigeon was sprung from the trap, shot a few feet above the ground, and fell to the ground, flopping around helplessly. And this was repeated once every 15 or 20 seconds. The wind blew some feathers toward the spectators. One of the rescuers caught one of the feathers and looked at it for a moment. I couldn't see his face due to the contrast between the shade of the trees and the bright sunlight coming from the fields, so I could only guess at what he thought and felt.
Moments later, one of the rescuers darted to the edge of killing field #2 and snatched up a pigeon laying wounded on the tennis court. Two rescuers got along side of her and I jumped out in front and we exited the park unobstructed. At the vet tent I looked at what was going on, feeling a variety of emotions rise up inside me--to be stopped by one of my friends, also a peacekeeper, saying, "there's a bird in the parking lot!" Another friend of mine tossed me my denim shirt and we were off to the parking lot where she saw the pigeon. While searching, two "shoot supporters" on their way into the park "had fun" with us, saying the bird was here or there. We quickly ignored them and located the bird, blood oozing out of his/her left "shoulder". I threw my shirt over him/her and picked him/her up. I ran back to the tent with the pigeon. This was the one thing I didn't want to do--I didn't think I could handle rescuing, but I was doing it because it had to be done. After turning the bird over to the vet crew, I realized my breathing and heart rate were out of proportion with my exertion, and I was crying. And...there wasn't time to actually finish crying--I knew I had to go back in! (As the day went on, I often either asked or was asked, "you goin' back in?"...were we seeking reassurance that we weren't insane for doing this again?...or seeking strength in numbers?)
As the day wore on, things got worse. Rescues were no longer so easy, with spectators grabbing the pigeons away from the rescuers (and, more so in the morning, than the afternoon, I saw some rescuers crying--perhaps we were all a bit numbed by the afternoon). Late in the day, I saw a group of rescuers linked arm-to-arm in a very tight group, somehow running without falling, just to save one bird from being snatched away from a rescuers' grasp. Tensions between rescuers and spectators increased, with much verbal abuse and occasional shoving, though our side was good at keeping our tempers in check and we were good in restraining each other from engaging in confrontations with the spectators. Towards the end of the day, I stepped in and separated one of the rescuers involved in a verbal exchange with a spectator, then received the same abuse from the spectator standing about a foot away from me for a minute or so, until he walked away, not finding what he wanted.
There were so many stories to tell, some I won't remember until later. Most important to me was knowing that we _did_ make a difference--especially to one hundred or so pigeons. And the people involved in the rescue effort--what a compassionate and heroic lot! I recall one woman who ran into the field and rescued birds, then continued over the fence at the other end of the field and into the woods...at lunch I saw her--torn, tattered, tired, but she went back inside and did it again! And the documenters...how anyone could look into the field all day and document the violence...well, I'm glad they could do it--I couldn't. Near the end of the day, I turned in a dead bird that a rescuer had handed to me, and saw a woman who received the birds looking at a line of six corpses and saying, "what happened to this one's head?"--something I never would have thought about asking before Hegins! Lots of things I never would have considered before that day!
My thoughts drift back to the dinner...to all us first-timers raising our hands. You goin' back in?