“Sure,” I say, and hand it over to her after I close the barrel with a snap. She holds it up to her shoulder so awkwardly that I wonder if she’s ever been anywhere near Montana. She squints one eye very tightly, which is something you never have to do with a shotgun, and points the gun at the washing machine.

“Have you killed things with this?” she says, sort of wistfully.

“Yes. Yes, I have,” I say.

“Really? What have you killed?” she says, and swings the barrel recklessly toward the water-heating tank.

“Varmints,” I say. “Mostly varmints.”

“Varmints? Really? What kind of varmints?” she says.

“Rats, birds, and snakes.”

“Birds? Birds aren’t varmints,” she says, opening her eye. Her gaze seems out of focus.

“Starlings are,” I say.

“Starlings?”

“Yeah, that’s right. Starlings.”

“But aren’t they just innocent birds like you’d have in the yard or something?” she says. Now she’s aiming the gun at the bare lightbulbs in the ceiling and pretending to pull the trigger and making little explosion sounds. I find this very disturbing for some reason.

“No—starlings are horrible stinky birds,” I say. “Don’t you know about starlings? In Virginia, we used to have outbreaks of them.”

“Outbreaks?” She giggles.

“Yes. That’s right. Outbreaks. That’s exactly what they were— starling outbreaks. They’d nest in the chimneys, and then hatch their babies in the spring. The babies would fly down into the bedroom and shit all over the rugs and curtains and the bedspread.”

“Why would they fly down into the bedroom?” she asks, holding the stock of the shotgun tight up against her jaw.

“What?” I say.

“Why would the baby starlings fly down into the bedroom instead of flying up the chimney and out into the sky?”

“Because baby birds, when they hatch, usually fall before they fly. Haven’t you noticed that up in Montana?”

“Where?” she says.

“Montana. Isn’t that where you said you were from?”

“Oh, yeah—Montana. Right. But I never noticed baby birds falling up there.”

“Maybe you weren’t paying very close attention to the seasons,” I say.

“So you had to actually shoot these little baby starlings in Virginia because they were falling into your bedroom and making a mess?”

“That’s right.”

“Couldn’t you have just opened a window and let them fly out?”

“Starlings are very stupid birds,” I tell her.

“They wouldn’t fly out?”

“That’s right. They’d crash into the window and then flop around on the floor, bleeding all over everything and twittering their heads off.”

“Couldn’t you just shoosh them out with a broom or something?”

“No. No, I couldn’t just ‘shoosh’ them out with a broom.”

“Why not?”