Farm News 11-27-05
Sunday morning, after chores
Bump and Trusty: The Race Continues
Bump, the cute little bunny I turned loose, has continued to grow and is now a good sized rabbit. In fact, he's a big rabbit, especially when measured across the back end. There are several older women in town with formidable backsides, but, proportionally, Bump has them beat. Bump has a great big butt and that butt must be mostly muscle because Bump is a very fast rabbit.
As long as Bump stays on the floor of the rabbitry Trusty is perfectly happy with him, but when Bump goes exploring, Trusty chases him. In a short distance straight line run I don't think Trusty could catch Bump, but both of them are learning to use every bit of cover and concealment to annoy the other. Bump could stay in the pasture where there is hay, grain, salt, water, and no dogs but that wouldn't be any fun.
I've seen Trusty catch Bump quite a few times. Trusty either picks him up and drops him, or simply hits him with his nose and sends Bump tumbling. Bump likes to dodge under the pasture fence, where he then turns around and says, “Nyah! Nyah! Nyah! Can't catch me!” to Trusty. Impudent rabbit.
Trusty caught another possum the day before Thanksgiving. Calvin was here and rescued the possum undamaged. It was a female, which delighted Calvin, as he has decided to become a possum breeder. He put it in a box and took it home with him to join his big male possum who already has two females in his harem.
Calvin figures that he can raise forty possums a year and sell their pelts for $5 each. As bad as possums smell I would want a lot more than $200 to skin forty of them, plus I think it would take $10 worth of feed to raise a $5 possum pelt. The truth is that Calvin wants to watch a marsupial raise babies which is interesting. Possums can cram a lot of babies into their pouches, I've seen as many as eight good sized babies come out of a pouch. Calvin says they can have as many as twenty in a litter, but I doubt that number.
Trapping
Calvin has a fur trapper license this year and is running a trap line. So far he has caught two possums and two crows. He's hoping for coons because their pelts bring as much as $35 each and coons are good to eat. He's also trying for beaver, an undertaking I endorse because I want to feast on beaver tail, considered to be a great delicacy by the rough and uncouth.
That brings up several interesting questions and a dilemma. What is the title of the father of the spouse of your child? We have no word to describe such an important relationship. Because marriage is traditionally a formalization of a political or economic alliance, I propose the neologism, father-ally-in-law. Two other men and myself have the relationship of father-ally-in-law with each other: the fathers of my daughter's husband and my son's wife.
If I have something as rare and wonderful as a couple of beaver tails ready for the barbeque fire, how do I share this treat with my father-allies-in-law? One of them is a Jew, which solves the problem because Jews don't eat rodents. The other is a high-end urbanite: urbane, sophisticated, and a nice guy. Because he is easy to get along with I just assume that he can enjoy the great outdoors, including its rough and uncouth, with delight. Now comes the ethical question: would it be considered a sincere expression of respect or a masculine challenge to invite an urbanite father-ally-in-law to fly halfway across the country and then drive for more than an hour just to have the pleasure of sitting by a campfire eating the roasted tail of a rodent? One has to live out in the woods for a long time to come to the point where that becomes an ethical question, I suppose. Oh, well, maybe Calvin won't trap any beaver.
We built a pair of box traps last week, neither of which impressed me as being likely to catch anything, but we had a good time building them. I would like to catch a few of the coons that raid the persimmon trees and Calvin is hoping to trap some muskrats. Muskrats are even smellier than possums but their pelts are worth more, too.
What I would like to trap are the squirrels that are over-running the place. They ate most of my white mulberries and asian pears, and consumed every last hazelnut. The babies are delightful but the adults are annoying fuzzy tailed tree rats. When we first moved here there were no squirrels on the place other than a few flying squirrels. I planted a lot of oak and walnut trees and now we have more squirrels than we need. When the new highway was rammed through the woods it took out most of the flying squirrel habitat, leaving us with nothing but ravenous red squirrels.
In the towns the little gray squirrels can survive and even thrive. I wonder how many of them were here in pre-columbian days. Gray squirrels are not nearly as shy as the red squirrels, they are much smaller, and the little ones play in the trees in plain sight, winning friends for the species. If one has a very high tolerance for nuisance animals, gray squirrels and flying squirrels can be tolerated as house pets, but red squirrels are too big and too rowdy.
It is interesting that these predispositions correspond with the nutritional value of the species. Red squirrels are big enough to eat and are considered a treat in many households. Gray and flying squirrels are just too little to be worth the trouble of catching and killing. Mice must be nutritious, they are a dietary staple for everything from mountain lions to skunks, but few humans would consider them edible although many keep them as house pets. Also, I'll bet that people who shudder at the thought of Calvin trapping coons keep mouse traps in their homes.
My Daughter
Although she is too self-involved to either provide me with grandchildren or start repaying the money I spent for her education, my daughter does have a few redeeming behaviors. One of them seems to be writing a blog about knitting. If you are interested in knitting, then check out her blog at Interstellar Knits. Maybe, with this plug, she will start repaying her debt to me.
When she was a child I allowed her to eat up to five chocolate chip cookies per day and charged her only 75¢ per cookie. I put them on her bill and charged her no interest until she had graduated from college. While she was in high school I gave her a car and sent her on trips to Chicago, San Francisco, and DeSmet, South Dakota. She even toured Europe while in high school. Then she went to a fancy eastern womens' college, a venture which I financed to the best of their ability to extract it from me.
Although I am careful to mention her obligations at every appropriate opportunity, she has yet to repay one cent of that debt. As usual, the next generation finally represents the ultimate depravity of the human race. After 5,000 years of being worse every year, the human race has finally hit the bottom with the next generation. I wonder, “What will happen now?”
Bump and Trusty: The Race Continues
Bump, the cute little bunny I turned loose, has continued to grow and is now a good sized rabbit. In fact, he's a big rabbit, especially when measured across the back end. There are several older women in town with formidable backsides, but, proportionally, Bump has them beat. Bump has a great big butt and that butt must be mostly muscle because Bump is a very fast rabbit.
As long as Bump stays on the floor of the rabbitry Trusty is perfectly happy with him, but when Bump goes exploring, Trusty chases him. In a short distance straight line run I don't think Trusty could catch Bump, but both of them are learning to use every bit of cover and concealment to annoy the other. Bump could stay in the pasture where there is hay, grain, salt, water, and no dogs but that wouldn't be any fun.
I've seen Trusty catch Bump quite a few times. Trusty either picks him up and drops him, or simply hits him with his nose and sends Bump tumbling. Bump likes to dodge under the pasture fence, where he then turns around and says, “Nyah! Nyah! Nyah! Can't catch me!” to Trusty. Impudent rabbit.
Trusty caught another possum the day before Thanksgiving. Calvin was here and rescued the possum undamaged. It was a female, which delighted Calvin, as he has decided to become a possum breeder. He put it in a box and took it home with him to join his big male possum who already has two females in his harem.
Calvin figures that he can raise forty possums a year and sell their pelts for $5 each. As bad as possums smell I would want a lot more than $200 to skin forty of them, plus I think it would take $10 worth of feed to raise a $5 possum pelt. The truth is that Calvin wants to watch a marsupial raise babies which is interesting. Possums can cram a lot of babies into their pouches, I've seen as many as eight good sized babies come out of a pouch. Calvin says they can have as many as twenty in a litter, but I doubt that number.
Trapping
Calvin has a fur trapper license this year and is running a trap line. So far he has caught two possums and two crows. He's hoping for coons because their pelts bring as much as $35 each and coons are good to eat. He's also trying for beaver, an undertaking I endorse because I want to feast on beaver tail, considered to be a great delicacy by the rough and uncouth.
That brings up several interesting questions and a dilemma. What is the title of the father of the spouse of your child? We have no word to describe such an important relationship. Because marriage is traditionally a formalization of a political or economic alliance, I propose the neologism, father-ally-in-law. Two other men and myself have the relationship of father-ally-in-law with each other: the fathers of my daughter's husband and my son's wife.
If I have something as rare and wonderful as a couple of beaver tails ready for the barbeque fire, how do I share this treat with my father-allies-in-law? One of them is a Jew, which solves the problem because Jews don't eat rodents. The other is a high-end urbanite: urbane, sophisticated, and a nice guy. Because he is easy to get along with I just assume that he can enjoy the great outdoors, including its rough and uncouth, with delight. Now comes the ethical question: would it be considered a sincere expression of respect or a masculine challenge to invite an urbanite father-ally-in-law to fly halfway across the country and then drive for more than an hour just to have the pleasure of sitting by a campfire eating the roasted tail of a rodent? One has to live out in the woods for a long time to come to the point where that becomes an ethical question, I suppose. Oh, well, maybe Calvin won't trap any beaver.
We built a pair of box traps last week, neither of which impressed me as being likely to catch anything, but we had a good time building them. I would like to catch a few of the coons that raid the persimmon trees and Calvin is hoping to trap some muskrats. Muskrats are even smellier than possums but their pelts are worth more, too.
What I would like to trap are the squirrels that are over-running the place. They ate most of my white mulberries and asian pears, and consumed every last hazelnut. The babies are delightful but the adults are annoying fuzzy tailed tree rats. When we first moved here there were no squirrels on the place other than a few flying squirrels. I planted a lot of oak and walnut trees and now we have more squirrels than we need. When the new highway was rammed through the woods it took out most of the flying squirrel habitat, leaving us with nothing but ravenous red squirrels.
In the towns the little gray squirrels can survive and even thrive. I wonder how many of them were here in pre-columbian days. Gray squirrels are not nearly as shy as the red squirrels, they are much smaller, and the little ones play in the trees in plain sight, winning friends for the species. If one has a very high tolerance for nuisance animals, gray squirrels and flying squirrels can be tolerated as house pets, but red squirrels are too big and too rowdy.
It is interesting that these predispositions correspond with the nutritional value of the species. Red squirrels are big enough to eat and are considered a treat in many households. Gray and flying squirrels are just too little to be worth the trouble of catching and killing. Mice must be nutritious, they are a dietary staple for everything from mountain lions to skunks, but few humans would consider them edible although many keep them as house pets. Also, I'll bet that people who shudder at the thought of Calvin trapping coons keep mouse traps in their homes.
My Daughter
Although she is too self-involved to either provide me with grandchildren or start repaying the money I spent for her education, my daughter does have a few redeeming behaviors. One of them seems to be writing a blog about knitting. If you are interested in knitting, then check out her blog at Interstellar Knits. Maybe, with this plug, she will start repaying her debt to me.
When she was a child I allowed her to eat up to five chocolate chip cookies per day and charged her only 75¢ per cookie. I put them on her bill and charged her no interest until she had graduated from college. While she was in high school I gave her a car and sent her on trips to Chicago, San Francisco, and DeSmet, South Dakota. She even toured Europe while in high school. Then she went to a fancy eastern womens' college, a venture which I financed to the best of their ability to extract it from me.
Although I am careful to mention her obligations at every appropriate opportunity, she has yet to repay one cent of that debt. As usual, the next generation finally represents the ultimate depravity of the human race. After 5,000 years of being worse every year, the human race has finally hit the bottom with the next generation. I wonder, “What will happen now?”
posted by The Geezer at 8:53 AM
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