Surviving

I'm standing outside my brother's house. He's talking about his life, which mostly means he's talking about his tiny new baby. He sees a bird circling in the sky and, stopping in mid-sentence, points up at it. "That's a hawk."
Although a little surprised that he can correctly identify it, I'm nonplussed. "Okay."
With his fixed eyes on the bird, he says,"Yeah, I shot one the other day."
"Why?" I frown.
"Well, we used to have a tiny puppy in the backyard, and we think the hawks came and took it. They've killed all the squirrels in our neighborhood."
I laugh, even though the puppy story is actually mildly traumatic. I laugh because really, every story I've ever made up about South Georgia being the Savage Land is more fact than fiction.