Clay Pigeon the Aviator

Charles Pigeon and his wife Sally wanted a child, but Sally couldn't get pregnant, so they adopted a little boy whom they named Clayton.   Clayton was an average child in most respects and got on well with everybody. His classmates from grade school on called him Clay.  His special interest was movies about airplanes.  That special interest developed into a passion for flying.  

As the years passed, Clay had already given up on his dream of learning to pilot a plane until one day a friend of his put a bug in his ear, telling Clay he should try to work as a crop duster because they always needed crop dusters.  Well, to cut a long story short,  over the next few years Clay spent a good deal of time flying a single engine aircraft over corn and wheat fields, and even though he was happy that he was flying, he got very bored by the  "same old, same old" cruising over those crop fields. Well, one day he  just got enough of it.  Noticing from the gas gauge that he had enough fuel to cruise around for another twenty minutes, he changed course to fly over a wooded area.

Those  particular woods happened to be the stomping grounds of quail hunters, and just as Clay had gotten about ten knots over the trees, there was the sound of gunfire--one of the hunters, Melvyn Dogood, missed his targeted quail and ended up hitting Clay Pigeon's plane.   The local paper reported the accident as "Crop Duster, Clay Pigeon Shot Down by Hunter Missing  Quail."  Dogood was devastated about almost having caused Clay's demise, but felt incredibly relieved when he learned that after recovering from intensive care, Pigeon bought a used single-engine Cessna with his insurance settlement money.  As time passed, the story was told again and again at Barney' Tavern about a quail hunter who had bad luck,  missing his bird and ending up with even worse luck when he shot down Clay Pigeon's crop-duster plane.