I'm open to the idea of someone mooring their boat in our pond, if it's a picturesque one. They can even live aboard it for a nominal rent. And they can keep all the snapping turtles they catch in exchange for an occasional couple of bowls of snapper soup.
Hunters are always trying to give us venison which we don't like; but snapper soup is another thing entirely. I think our edition of The Joy of Cooking has a recipe starting with the necessary cutting off of the head of the snapper with an ax. I'll provide the chopping block and the ax.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/01/business/01boats.html?_r=3&hp
Meanwhile, in other news: Detroit is reverting to the wild and there's a wide awake fellow selling skinned raccoons for $12 each. Slick Willy took his woman in 1970; but apparently he didn't take the Coonman's hunting dogs or his down home skills. I like his little touch of leaving one paw on the carcass.
"The paw is old school," says Glemie Dean Beasley, a Detroit raccoon hunter and meat salesman. "It lets the customers know it's not a cat or dog."
During the seven or so minute video that accompanies the newspaper article the Coonman channels Julia Child with a nice raccoon cooking demonstration. And that's before he plays and sings a nice blues song that's got a tempo perfect for our level of West Coast Swing skill.
Unfortunately I've only seen raccoons two times since we bought our land in 1978; although there's no question that they're regularly around. Linda just pointed out a raccoon paw print to me down at the creek a few days ago. I may look into learning how to set a snare. That raccoon recipe looked mighty inviting; although I might be tempted to present it to Linda as rabbit if I ever get the chance to try it out.
The Coonman also sells rabbits and squirrels if you happen to be passing through Detroit and want to work up to the raccoon sort of sideways. I bet he would have a field day with the geese around here and up and down along the river drives in Philly.
The quotes from Beasley are priceless. An example - "Today people got no skill and things is getting worse," he laments. "What people gonna do? They gonna eat each other up is what they gonna do." That's a fellow I'd like to know.
http://www.detnews.com/article/20090402/METRO08/904020395/To+urban+hunter++next+meal+is+scampering+by
And, in yet other news, here's a nice, very reasonable, well spoken Arab fellow who wants to come and make an impact on a neighborhood near you.
http://www.tangle.com/view_video.php?viewkey=0861ff3eabea1ceb73e4
Showing posts with label rabbits. Show all posts
Showing posts with label rabbits. Show all posts
Thursday, April 2, 2009
Wednesday, July 16, 2008
Have I mentioned that I'm feeling pretty proud of my garden
Have I mentioned that I'm feeling pretty proud of my garden this year. It may not be the biggest garden in Collegeville, but it's surely going to be the most efficiently productive two hundred or so square foot garden in the county, if not the country.
Firstly, the light bulb finally illuminated in my head about efficient layout after decades of having the answer right under my nose at least a couple of times a year when I've flown over the West and seen the round circles of cultivation, each watered by its patiently rotating sprinkler system. Theaters in the Round, stones arranged in henges, crop circles, fairy rings of mushrooms under the trees, and the large example of those ubiquitous bullseyes of crops out west, how have I failed to twig to the utter stupidity of squareness and the utter rightness of roundness for all these years?
Secondly, I've fenced the thing so well that the cute little fawns and their brutish parents have thus far inspected it thoroughly without detecting a weakness within their feeble capabilities of strength and reach. I've fenced the thing so well that my tomatoes are safe short of an escape from the zoo of something as strong as a buffalo or possessed of the reach of a giraffe. It's true there are a couple of minor flaws for correction next year. A patient rabbit has discovered at least three places where it can just reach through the two layers of fence low down to nip at the ends of Swiss Chard leaves.
Thirdly, roundness means that a single centrifugal sprinkler in the center can efficiently water the whole thing with the merest effort of adjustment of the outside tap. It's true the zucchinis have grown taller and more luxuriant than I've ever seen them and they're blocking part of the arc of the sprinkler, but that's a mere detail easy of solution next year. This year it only means that I need to run the sprinkler a bit longer to let those disfavored areas get their fill.
Firstly, the light bulb finally illuminated in my head about efficient layout after decades of having the answer right under my nose at least a couple of times a year when I've flown over the West and seen the round circles of cultivation, each watered by its patiently rotating sprinkler system. Theaters in the Round, stones arranged in henges, crop circles, fairy rings of mushrooms under the trees, and the large example of those ubiquitous bullseyes of crops out west, how have I failed to twig to the utter stupidity of squareness and the utter rightness of roundness for all these years?
Secondly, I've fenced the thing so well that the cute little fawns and their brutish parents have thus far inspected it thoroughly without detecting a weakness within their feeble capabilities of strength and reach. I've fenced the thing so well that my tomatoes are safe short of an escape from the zoo of something as strong as a buffalo or possessed of the reach of a giraffe. It's true there are a couple of minor flaws for correction next year. A patient rabbit has discovered at least three places where it can just reach through the two layers of fence low down to nip at the ends of Swiss Chard leaves.
Thirdly, roundness means that a single centrifugal sprinkler in the center can efficiently water the whole thing with the merest effort of adjustment of the outside tap. It's true the zucchinis have grown taller and more luxuriant than I've ever seen them and they're blocking part of the arc of the sprinkler, but that's a mere detail easy of solution next year. This year it only means that I need to run the sprinkler a bit longer to let those disfavored areas get their fill.
Sunday, July 6, 2008
Lots of Activity in Collegeville last evening.
Lot's of activity in Collegeville last evening. At around 6:00 two very energetic rabbits entertained us with a shocking display of copulation on the lawn just outside the patio doors. The male of the pair has a big piece of hide torn off his butt, perhaps by a fox. Yet there he is, out in the open, giving testimony that love conquers all, even fear of the fox. Or perhaps he's been nibbling at the watermellon rind in the mulch heap.
Later in the evening two cute little fawns gamboled happily on the lawn very near the daylillies whose buds they have been nipping off despite the fact that daylillies are one of the few plants which have usually survived the depredations of their verminous ancestors. I smiled at their carefree antics because, unbeknownst to them, at the 4th of July picnic I gave permission for a new bow hunter to come and check out their haunts. May he plunge his arrows deep into their vitals, eat their raw livers and feast on their daylily bud fattened haunches.
Which reminds me, I hope last year's very successful crossbow hunter also returns, but the last time I saw him he was pretty resigned about the prognosis of his cancer. During a meeting in the woods at the end of the winter he told me he had harvested six of the hooved vermin and he was hoping for another. Bravo that he's allowed to use a crossbow under some kind of disability clause in the hunting rules. What an upbeat and brave fellow. And what a public servant to be quietly culling the vast piratical deer herd between bouts of chemotherapy. Whatever - I hope he survives, and I hope he and his family and his whole neighborhood feast on venison again this winter.
Later in the evening two cute little fawns gamboled happily on the lawn very near the daylillies whose buds they have been nipping off despite the fact that daylillies are one of the few plants which have usually survived the depredations of their verminous ancestors. I smiled at their carefree antics because, unbeknownst to them, at the 4th of July picnic I gave permission for a new bow hunter to come and check out their haunts. May he plunge his arrows deep into their vitals, eat their raw livers and feast on their daylily bud fattened haunches.
Which reminds me, I hope last year's very successful crossbow hunter also returns, but the last time I saw him he was pretty resigned about the prognosis of his cancer. During a meeting in the woods at the end of the winter he told me he had harvested six of the hooved vermin and he was hoping for another. Bravo that he's allowed to use a crossbow under some kind of disability clause in the hunting rules. What an upbeat and brave fellow. And what a public servant to be quietly culling the vast piratical deer herd between bouts of chemotherapy. Whatever - I hope he survives, and I hope he and his family and his whole neighborhood feast on venison again this winter.
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