My family, having had a somewhat romantic attitude toward pioneering skills, hunted, fished, trapped and all of those related endeavors. I recall some forty years ago when my younger son and his cousin decided they would set a trap line and sell raccoon skins. The traps were set and we sat up and talked in the camp house for the evening. In the morning, we went out to check the trap line. After checking a couple which were not touched, we came to perhaps the third and there was a raccoon with his paw in the trap. Knowing how ferocious a raccoon can be, my nephew reached for his pistol in order to deal with the coon. A raccoon, being nocturnal by nature has a startle response of covering his eyes to hide the reflection of light in his eyes. As my nephew cocked the pistol, the terrified raccoon covered his eyes suggesting that something unbearable was about to happen. I watched the expressions on the faces of my son and nephew change. They realized that they were about to take something away from the raccoon that they did not have the power to give back. I am sure that through the following years they have had their memories return to that raccoon and how, somehow, the traps have ended up in a burlap bag, never to be used again.
Posted on: Thu, 22 Jan 2015 06:37:02 +0000
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