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Beaver Seen Riding Bike Toward Town!I can remember growing up and looking for ways to make extra money and of course to keep myself out of trouble. I have to tell you, it was mostly trial and error in those days, especially error. I think the hardest animal to catch at least for me at age 11 had to be the muskrat. I know what your thinking... a muskrat? Why that's the easiest animal to catch and maybe that was the problem, I had just plain put too much thought into it. Now when it came to catching beavers...I was king. Actually my first catch was a 82 inch blanket beaver that took most of one Saturday to drag out to my means of transportation... an all terrain bike. No not the motorized ones, the ones that you actually had to exert energy onto the peddles to make it go. I laid the beaver with it's head on the handle bars, stomach resting on the banana seat with it's tail flopping in the wind. We had a few minor set-back on the way home. A couple of times the tail would drop down between the back spokes in the wheel acting like putting on the emergency brake. The hind tire would let out a squeal as it shuddered to a stop on the gravel filled pavement. I finally resorted to placing the beaver butt first in the V-shaped area resting just below my seat and heading toward the handle bars. I tied his front paws to the handle bars to keep him from falling either direction causing the bike to topple. It didn't take long for word to reach the center of town, our center of town was the general store where people would just come in and sit to catch upon the local gossip. There were varying reports of a child and a beaver headed for town on a bike. One old lady claimed she had seen a young lad on a bike going down a hill and that it looked like a beaver was also riding and was doing most of the peddling. Others told of the beaver and the bike, leaving out the young lad. One old man commented it must be one of those there circus beavers trained to ride bikes that must have escaped and if it knew how to ride a bike, what other tricks might it know. By the time I finally arrived home the whole town was a buzz. As I pulled into the driveway, my grandfather spotted me from the porch and rushed me and the beaver into the garage. I tried to explain that I wanted to take it around to my friends to show how great of a trapper I was. He went on to explain all the ruckus going on in town and that my grandmothers heart could not take the pressure of knowing it was me. As I walked in the door, there sat grandma in her usual location with phone in hand writing notes as people reported in. She was the central hub in town and coordinated most of the socials and church functions. Here I was the local hero and was not allowed to say a word. My grandfather looking at the beaver then asked...now what are you going to do with it? Come to think of it, I had never given any thought to what I would do with an animal once I had caught it. Gramp then brought into the conversation that he had an old friend that had been an avid trapper for years and our best bet was to load it into the back of the old truck and head on over to his house. I had now made my way into the realm of being a trapper. Boy... my first catch and it was a good one. About halfway there I spotted a skunk on the side of the road that someone must have hit with their car the night before. I convinced Gramp to pull over because this happen to be part of the fur bearing animals I had been in pursuit of. Gramp unwillingly pulled over to the shoulder of the road and I ran the seventy yards back to where it lay. It must have seen the car coming and reacted by spraying the whole area in hopes of warding of the car. I grabbed it by the front paw and carried it back to the truck and gave it a toss next to the beaver. We finally arrived at Al's place and it gave off some kind of eerie feeling as you walked to his front door. It looked like he never threw away anything. There was piles of junk stacked higher than myself on both sides of the narrow pathway to the front door. Gramp had pre warned me that Al had lost an eye years ago and wore a black patch, and what ever I did...please don't stare at it because it was very impolite. Gramp first knocked on the door then proceeded to pound on it too get Al's attention. Finally a grouchy voice replied...I'm coming, hold your horses. The door flew open and there stood a skinny five foot two old man with a black patch over his eye. I know Gramp told me not to stare, but I couldn't help myself. Al stepped in front of me and exclaimed..."What you looking at boy? Are ye looking at my patch" in a pirate sounding voice. I said I was sorry but couldn't help it. He had us take a seat at the table, which by the way was covered with old newspapers and fur. He went on for better than an hour of how he had been in a fight with a Grizzly bear that had somehow found it's way into the Adirondacks. He said the Grizzly bear had on many occasions followed him at a distance as we he walked the fifteen miles through the woods on his trap-line. He had called out to the Grizzly to come and fight if that's what it was going to take. More than once he had checked a trap only to find the animal shredded and eaten with Grizzly tracks found in the mud. He knew the Grizzly was to blame. One day he decided to backtrack and lay in wait for the Grizzly to appear. Al never carried a gun because of the added weight, he was already carrying a pack basket on his back and would skin the animals on the spot and carry just the fur back. He said he spotted the grizzly coming up the trail through the hemlocks and slowly removed his back pack from his shoulders. He shimmed up the tree and edged his way out onto a over-hanging branch that lay over the trail. Once the grizzly walked under the branch, Al said he leaped onto the grizzly's back and put the bear in a head-lock. At this point it was bear against man. The fight had gone on for a couple of hours with the two of them rolling on the ground, first Al having the bear in the head-lock position and then the bear placed Al in the same chock hold. Al said that they were finally on their feet giving each other a bear hug when Al saw his chance. He slammed down hard with his boot onto the bears toes. The bear let our a scream and went running through the woods hobbling. So I finally had to ask...did the bear catch you with is claw and poked your eye out? He laughed and replied that the reason he had lost his eye was from a more hideous creature...his ex-wife. She had become irritated with him to the point of throwing a sharp object in his direction and was unable to duck in time. Al then wanted to know what was the reason for the visit. I exclaimed that I had caught a big beaver and was clueless of what to do next. Al said he would buy it from me just the way it was and would also show me the best way to skin it. We headed for the back end of the truck and Al stepped forward and dropped the tailgate, he was as excited to see the beaver as I was to have caught it. He then let out this high pitched girly scream and went running in the opposite direction the the truck. I guess the skunk was only dazed or it was playing dead on the side of the road for it was fully awake now and was pissed. It wouldn't let any of us near the truck without pointing his butt at us with his tail high in the air. Gramp finally backed the truck up next to an embankment so that the tailgate was level with the ground. The skunk finally walked off in triumph with its head held high. It took Gramp and I better than an hour to finally locate Al hiding in a in a fifty five gallon barrel with the lid placed on top. Gramp finally convinced Al the skunk was gone. Al looked the beaver up and down, running his hands through the hair on the beavers back. He called it the guard hairs and that the beaver was in excellent condition. He showed me how to properly skin the animal and not to worry about any fat left on the pelt. It took him about five minuets to accomplish the skinning and another fifteen to get it fleshed. Once this was completed he pulled out a four by eight sheet of plywood and started tacking the beaver to the board in the way of small nails and a hammer. In those days I received two dollars a week for an allowance if my room was cleaned, yard mowed and garbage was taken to the curb. Al paid me a dollar a inch which amounted to $82.00. I was rich and that experience started me on my way of thirty years of trapping. I sold all of my fur to Al for years until his passing. He would always bring up the skunk experience explaining he was not hiding from the skunk, buy laying in wait as he did with the grizzly. |
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