The Vasectomy Doctor (25 page)

The late Pope John Paul and I would not have a great deal in common I suspect. But one thing that we do have in common is that we were both shot and we both went in to see our tormentors in prison later. I imagine that we both did that for the same reason – to show ourselves to our would-be assassins as ordinary flesh and blood human beings, to forgive and to bring closure. My man pleaded insanity and was sent to a hospital prison in Dundrum, county Dublin that used to be called the Central Mental Lunatic Asylum. In this day of political correctness this institution is more kindly named today as the Central Mental Hospital. When he had been locked up in there for about three months I asked if I might be allowed to go in and visit him in that grimmest of places. Permission was readily granted.

The Central Mental Hospital was built in 1850 and originally housed eighty men and forty women. Today it has a bed complement of eighty-eight male beds only. It would appear that Irish women no longer need these kinds of facilities. It's men only who become insane, commit a crime and need to be locked away for their own protection. The hospital sits on a thirty-five acre site surrounded by an eighteen-foot high perimeter wall. It is located in a prime residential district of south county Dublin and must be worth an absolute fortune. It is an anachronistic institution of very dubious value reflecting as it does the thinking about mental illness and criminality in the dark ages of medicine.

One enters this dour Victorian pile though high and massive locked gate. Once inside there is a fifty-yard walk up to the hospital-prison itself. The grounds are well maintained by the inmate patients and the place smells of wallflowers. I do not know what this man is doing in here nor what it was that possessed him to come down to Clane and shoot me. But of this I am quite sure – when he pulled the trigger and shot me in the right hip and when he fired at me several times again and, fortunately for me, kept missing, he may have been all fired up, he had had a good few drinks, he may have been very annoyed with me but he was not insane and he should not be locked up in this quasi prison hospital. The place is all locks and keys and bars and chains. It is like a cross between a dog pound and a nursing home. I am shown into this cell-like room where I await my fate.

In due course there is more clattering and banging of gates and bars and big keys engaging with tumblers and my man is shown in and sat down opposite me across a table. We shake hands – all is courteous and calm. He explained to me that eight years ago I had vasectomised him and that shortly following this he developed significant pain and discomfort and that when he brought this to
my attention I seemed not to care. Then, on top of that, his wife left
him and ran away with another man and his life seemed ruined and it was mostly all my fault. And he then began to build up resentment against me and planned that some day he would shoot me but not kill me. He now felt very sorry and hoped that I could find forgiveness for what he had done to me and to my family.

Forgiveness came easily. I know I am not perfect and at times I can be abrupt. And if he thought that I did not give him the attention he deserved when he developed his post-operative pain then maybe he had a point. Of course this does not excuse his shooting me. Nor does it, even more importantly, excuse his firing at me recklessly five times after hitting me with the first shot. But never mind. The important thing in life is to resolve conflicts and get on with it and this we did. We shook hands again and he remained on in this prison hospital for another two years after which time he was released back into free Ireland. He wrote to me subsequently and apologised again and I consider the matter closed and behind us all.

When, five days post-shooting, Seán Leyden was driving me back to Clane General Hospital after my operation in St James' as we passed the surgery wherein I had been shot I got this incredible urge to go inside into the room where it had all happened. This was not some sort of a whim; it was more an imperative or a compulsion. It was as if some force inside me was saying go in there and take a good look around and that will help you reach some resolution. And I did and it did.

* * *

One mile as the crow flies heading northwest straight out from the front door of Downings House there is a 500-acre wilderness of what we call high-bog, which is bog that has not been cut or otherwise interfered with. Around the periphery of this high-bog there are rougher areas of cutaway-bog, full of drains and ditches and haphazardly naturally planted hazel, ash and birch interspersed
with massive informal plantations of gorse, rhododendron and heath
er. This is where over the centuries turf has been cut away and saved and taken home to keep cabins warm during the long cold winters. All of this is prime rough-shooting country. The high-bog holds snipe while the cutaway bog holds woodcock. Both snipe and woodcock are winter migratory birds that fly into Ireland from sub-artic countries. They come in at night on the full moon of October and November. They sleep by day and feed by night by probing their long beaks through cattle pads that attract worms up towards the surface. If it becomes too frosty they have to move on because they cannot probe the ground. They move on to the frost-free coast or go further south to France, Spain or even to the Canaries. Snipe and woodcock are mystical creatures.

As you squish your way across the high-bog snipe will rise up in front of you with their characteristic rasping cry of alarm. Some will rise away out of range while others will get up at your feet. It depends to some extent on what way the wind is blowing, on the time of day and how deeply the birds are sleeping. You do not have to have a dog for snipe-shooting other than to help you retrieve a bird that may have been downed in heavy cover. In this situation a good retrieving dog is essential. Otherwise dogs must be restrained on leads and not allowed beat forwards or they will put up too many wild snipe out of range.

When a snipe gets up off the high-bog he grabs the air with his strong broad wings and moves from zero to forty miles an hour in
just over two seconds. This bird's acceleration is superior to any other
bird or animal that I know of. Because of the way he is grabbing at the air this makes him fly with a zigzag pattern. The whole secret about successful snipe-shooting is to be alert and quick. You move across the bog slowly with the gun held out in front ready to shoot at any second and without warning. You only have a split second to get onto your target. You keep the gun moving at all times and pull the trigger immediately you are above the bird and in the area where you have worked out your snipe will be by the time the shot
gets out to him. Shooting does not get much more difficult than this.

Woodcock are distantly related to snipe and offer a different
challenge. About twice the size of a snipe they generally favour warm
and waterproof places of shelter. Under holly trees or rhododendron bushes or in the bracken on the sunny slopes of evergreen forests,
those are the haunts favoured by this silent bird. You must have a dog
or dogs with you when you go woodcock shooting, otherwise you are, as they say, at nothing. Woodcock will lie there and not make a move unless forced to do so by a springer spaniel. That is how these dogs get their name – they spring game. Cocker spaniels take their name from woodcock shooting. Just like snipe when woodcock are on the wing, they are fast and elusive.

These days, while far from being a wealthy man, I can afford some things that were out of the question when the children were growing up. One such indulgence is driven shooting. Of all the various forms of game shooting this is the most formal and ordered. It is also, of course, the most expensive. Derived from Victorian times when the modern shotgun was invented, driven shoots are usually held on large private estates of several hundred acres where pheasants and partridge and maybe mallard are raised on the estate specifically for the shoot which typically will be held every second weekend throughout the shooting season.

On the day of the shoot there will be eight or ten guns. Sometimes the guns ‘share' with the two shooters, shooting every second drive. There will be five drives on any given day, three before lunch and two afterwards. The shoot manager who is bound by law to start
the day off with a short lecture on gun safety oversees the guns. After
the lecture lots are drawn for pegs. If you draw for example number two then you will be on peg number two for the first drive, number four for the second drive and so on up like that. In any given drive,
even on the best and most expensive shoots, there will be times when
no birds at all will come over certain pegs and the gun standing there will fire no shots at all. It is really a matter of luck how you
are drawn on any given day. Generally you will have good drives and
not so good ones. The manager takes out the guns to the first drive, usually sitting on bales of straw on the back of a tractor-trailer, and places them at their peg. On the trailer also will be some dogs and their handlers. The shotguns are kept in ‘sleeves' at all times until you are at your peg. The pegs are back some thirty yards from the wood, forest or thicket from which the birds are to be driven.

There will be up to twenty ‘beaters', mostly young people earning a few extra bob and also having a good day out. Some beaters will have dogs with them; mostly young springers are used. Others, armed with long sticks, are called ‘stoppers' and these people keep to the outside of the drive and stop birds running out the sides. They tap the trees with their sticks or flap plastic flags noisily to keep the birds in. The gamekeeper usually oversees the beaters and determines how fast or slowly they move through the cover. A good drive is where the birds get up in ones and twos. A bad drive is where the birds get up in big bunches and the drive is over in a few minutes. Dribbling the birds out in small groups takes considerable skill and is what earns the keeper a good tip at the end of the day. The drive is started with the sounding of a hunting horn at a time when everyone is in place: guns, beaters and ‘picker uppers' with their re
trievers. This time is agreed between shoot manager and head game
keeper communicating with each other over walkie-talkies.

Now the shooting starts and the place comes alive with the roar
of shotguns. The ‘guns' wear earplugs or earmuffs. During the lecture
earlier the guns have been warned to keep their barrels pointing skywards while waiting for the driven birds to come their way. Also they will have been told not to shoot at any ‘low birds' or ground game; a low bird is one that does not have plenty of clear sky all
around it. Shooting at low birds endangers the beaters coming through
the woods. A gun who repeatedly offends in this manner may be asked to go home or more likely asked not to come back to that shoot again. Safety is always a big issue at these shoots and rightly so. Every year beaters get injured in Ireland, mostly only slightly but sometimes badly enough to lose the sight in one eye.

After the first drive the beaters move on to the next thicket or wood while the dog-men put their labradors and springers to work picking up. The guns pick up their empty cartridges, sleeve up their shotguns and move back to the tractor-trailer. At this stage maybe sloe gin is passed around and everyone wants to know how the other got on. A fine day on a shoot like this is very sociable, relaxing and good fun. A wet cold winter's day is a different story of course. But even then there is always the few drinks and a few songs or tunes on the whistle back in the hotel afterwards.

This life is short and so we ought to try and make it merry.

When things look dreary then take good cheer in fine old port and sherry.

Though some they may choose another muse old Bacchus wins I'm thinking

And in cellar cool I'll take a stool and start drinking, drinking, and drinking.

 

 

 

Andrew Rynne

 

Dr. Andrew Rynne was born in County Kildare and studied medicine at the Royal College of Surgeons in Dublin. Following an internship and vasectomy training in Ontario, Canada, he returned to begin general practice in Kildare, where he still works. He writes a weekly opinion column for the
Irish Medical News
and has appeared frequently on both radio and television.