Snow Signs

          An extra letter blog this week! I just know you can’t get enough of me!

          Speaking of getting enough…

          We had more snow! Not nearly as much as the time before, only about an inch or two — I say one inch, Mike says two, but you know how men measure!

          With the lighter amount of snow, it gave Mike a chance to use his electric snow shovel. We bought it to get the snow off the roof but it was a bust. For one thing, it doesn’t work very well on more than an inch or two, and for another thing, if you have a lot of snow on your roof, you’re not supposed to get on your roof!

          Live and learn.

          I like to try and read the signs in the snow and with a fresh dusting on the ground it gave me a chance to practice.

          This is what it looks like when Peggy takes the garbage down to the road. My tracks going in both directions and what looks like a sidewinder trail.

         I was on my way to walk the latest edition of my jibber-jabber down to my Miss Rosie and when I saw this, I had to laugh. A corner of the trash bag must’ve been dragging.

        Near the end of the driveway, I see these little tracks. I didn’t think to make a picture with something to give it perspective so you’ll have to take my word for it that they were little.

          “How little?” you ask.

          I’m thinking mouse little. My head swung back and forth as I followed the trail from one side of the driveway to the other. At one point it looks like he tried to jump up on the bank and didn’t make it. My eyes follow his tracks as he skirted the snow wall, then I see where he made another attempt to gain the top. He made it. His trail winds off across the top of the snow then disappears. Do they burrow under the snow? I wondered but didn’t see anything that looked like a hole.

          There wasn’t any wind so I had a nice walk down to the Kipps.

Following all of the COVID guidelines, aka wearing our masks, I gave Miss Rosie her weekly letter and she gave me a Valentine gift.

          “I wrapped it special,” she said making a joke. And just for the record, I’m way okay with this kind of gift wrapping.

          Like a kid at Christmas, I dived right in! Miss Rosie got me a plaque with a philosophy on it that we should all adopt.

          Life is like a camera. Focus on what’s important, capture good times, develop from the negatives, and if things don’t work out, take another shot.

          I love it! And I love the second part of my gift too. A bag of delicious, delectable, scrumptious, my most-favorite snack in the whole wide world! — oyster crackers! And not just any oyster crackers either. The ones from Aldi’s! They’re the best! I guess there’s worse things in life to be addicted to, don’cha think?

          Lamar got his bride of 50 years a bouquet for Valentine’s Day. It’s nice to see the bright colors in this bleak landscape of winter and I took a few pictures.

          When I brought my gifts home, Mike said, “She got you oyster crackers?”

          “It’s way better than a box of chocolates — which is what I got her.” 

>>>*<<< 

          The floor under my rolly desk chair developed a hole. There was a ridge and whenever I’d pull my chair in, it would hit, and over the years, a hole developed. I put a rug down for a while and that helped but my roller was catching the back of the rug and bunching it up which was just as aggravating as falling in the hole so I took it out.

          Mike uses my computer almost as much as I do. It’s always on and it’s situated conveniently. Most of the time I don’t mind. But when I’m writing and he wants it, I get a little aggravated.

          “You’ve got two computers on your desk. Why don’t you use one of them?” I’ll ask.

          Mike is always good for a snappy comeback. “This is my computer.” What’s yours is mine kinda deals. Then he tries to pacify me. “I’ll just be a minute.”

          And I ask God for patience and remind myself that my deadline for letter blog writing is self-imposed.

          “I need to get some stuff and fix this hole,” Mike said a couple of weeks ago.

I got a cardboard and put under my chair. That helped and it didn’t bunch. But this week the day came. The day came when he got out the patching cement and fixed the hole.

There was extra cement so I got a disposable glove and filled it with the leftovers. I thought I’d gotten all the air out but obviously didn’t. It didn’t take long before I was feeling it to see how it was setting up and was surprised by how hot it had gotten. It was set in couple of hours but I waited a whole day before I tore the glove off. I didn’t want to risk breaking a finger.

“What are you going to do with it?” you wanna know.

I’m thinking of painting it all kinds of funky colors and using it for rings or something.

Besides making the cement hand, I made face masks this week too. My beautiful Minnesota sister, who used to work from home, now has to actually leave her house for work these days. and what girl doesn’t like to have variety? One side is cute, the other side is a solid color so that gives her an even bigger selection.

I kinda like making masks. They’re fast and easy and I still had all this cute material and elastic just sitting in a bin. But most importantly, I had my helper too.

Okay, okay! He was more company than help. I’ve never had a cat like Tiger before. He just wants to be with his people. If he’s not sitting at the door watching the birds, you can normally find him with one or the other of us — but he generally likes to be with me more than Mike.

Another new thing I tackled this week was making a special bread for my special gal. My poor Miss Rosie loves bread. Unfortunately, the doctor put her on a non-gluten, non-dairy diet. There goes her beloved bread!

“Mike, when we go to the store, I wanna get almond flour or something and try to make Rosie some bread.” I knew there were other kinds besides almond.

“Let her make her own bread,” Mr. Cranky Pants says.

“Now you know that I always make bread for Miss Rosie and with the internet, I have access to a whole bunch of recipes that she doesn’t.”

Mike likes to pretend he’s hard-hearted but it’s all an act. Bantering is his love language.

At the store I stopped at the shelf of specialty flours and nearly fell on the floor. Holy cow! Almond flour is expensive! Right next door to the almond flour lives coconut flour. It was a larger bag and much more reasonably priced. “I bet this’ll work.” I put it in the buggy.

At home, I spent a bunch of time searching the internet for recipes and came across a coconut flour bread that had rosemary and garlic in it. I love rosemary and garlic!

This bread recipe is my personal favorite. Not only is it a great alternative for people with nut allergies, but it’s rich with rosemary and garlic flavors. The best way to eat any bread, in my opinion, is as toast, and this recipe is no exception. Toast it up on the stove or in the oven and top it with some butter! We promise you this bread recipe will change the way you enjoy keto bread.

I was sold!

I mixed it up and baked it. I let it sit a little while then sliced it. It was kind of grainy like corn bread but I did like the rosemary and garlic flavor. I kept a couple of slices for toast the next morning and took the rest down to Rosie.  

“How did she like it?” you ask.

She said it was good but the true test’ll be if she ever asks me to make it for her again. Then I’ll know if she really liked it or was just being polite.

I had rosemary garlic toast with my hard-boiled eggs for breakfast the next morning. I thought the flavor of the bread complemented my eggs very well but the texture will take getting used to.

“Try it,” I twisted Mike’s arm.

After my persistent pestering he eventually gave in and took a bite. “YUCK! It tastes like sand!”

“Rosemary garlic sand!” I corrected.

The same website has a couple of other bread recipes that I’m gonna try for Miss Rosie. 

>>>*<<<

When they replaced our old open-grate single-lane bridge, Mike and I became friends with the project manager and his family. Duane’s daughter Addi and I share a special bond and I make her little suncatchers at holidays. She’ll make me a card, or a little story book, or snowflake, and we’ll exchange these little gifts. I’ll usually do a little baking for the rest of the family. Cookies, pumpkin roll, dream bars. But Mike hates that I do something special for Addi and not for the other two kids.

I’m not sure how the whole dynamics came about. It certainly wasn’t planned and it was not my intention to hurt anyone’s feelings or exclude anyone. If I had to guess, I’d say Addi reminds me of my daughter when she was that age.

After the first few times I’d given Addi something (and took cookies for the family) Mike’s criticisms started to work on me. Was I wrong?

I had to know so I turned to the kids’ mother Liz.

“Mike thinks it’s unfair for me to bring something special for Addi and not the other two. What do you think about it?”

Liz’s response settled it for me, once and for all. “The other two are fine. They understand you and Addi are friends. I like how it makes Addi feel special. I work hard to make them all feel loved equally so that you don’t have too. Your friendship is special to Addi.”

At Christmas I took Addi a Santa and she wrote me a thank you card that touched my heart. “Thank you for the pumpkin roll,” she wrote. “And I love the Santa and all the suncatchers you made for me. They’re my favorite thing to show everyone who comes to my house.”

That was when I realized Addi is like my sister Phyllis. She doesn’t take down her holiday themed suncatchers either. All of them stay up, all the time.

I can’t tell you the power of a good thank you note. I really felt like Addi loved and appreciated the gifts I’d made her and it made me want to heap more on her.

Two things I want to tell you here.

One. My Miss Rosie is Queen of Thank You Notes. That women knows the value of such notes and always sends me the most beautiful thank you notes — even if she’d already thanked me in person. And even though she lives right down the road here and could easily deliver them in person, she always uses the postal service.

“Save your stamp!” I’d scolded when she first started doing this.

“Everyone likes getting cards in the mail,” she told me, and continues to do it to this very day.

Two. I wasn’t a very good thank you noter in my younger years. I’m not much better now. I sorely regret that I’d taken my mother-in-law for granted. Clara sent the most beautiful gifts for the kids and I really did appreciate it but never told her so. I was busy, money was tight, and long-distant phone calls were expensive.

Sigh.

I’m not passing any judgement here on anyone but myself. But if someone used to send you gifts, say, money in your birthday card for example, and they don’t anymore, that’s probably why.

Valentine’s Day!

I’d made Addi a suncatcher and we went to deliver it this week. Liz knew we were coming but got held up. Rather than sit in the driveway and wait we decided to go for a ride.

“Let’s follow a water truck and see where they’re going,” Mike suggested.

I took a few pictures for you.

We never did follow the truck the whole way to the drilling site. Liz texted and told me they were home so we turned around and went back to Addi’s house.  I gave her her newest addition for her collection. She loves it! Isn’t she just the cutest cutie-patootie you’ve ever seen!

We’d also made Valentine bags for all the kids and you can be sure this gal put the same amount of candy in each bag.

Speaking of Valentine’s…

I have a bear collection. Mike’s been buying the gift bears with the year on the foot from Walmart since we’ve been together. Every year I get a bear for Valentine’s, Easter, and usually two for Christmas. I just can’t pick between the boy bear and his matching girl so Mike lets me have them both.

Well, here we were, coming up on Valentine’s and forgotten to get a bear.

“We can get it next week when we go,” I said.

“Or we can order it online,” my tech-savvy husband says. He got online but Walmart won’t ship the bears.

“Next week it is,” I said.

“They’ll be gone and we won’t get one,” Mike worried. So, it was off to Walmart we went.

I took pictures.

Geese on the Susquehanna.

The Susquehanna is frozen over at Tunkhannock.

A Valentine bear isn’t the only thing we came home with. Remember the egg cooker I didn’t want because, “I don’t need one more thing sitting around!”?

It turns out that I rather like the darn thing!

We bought the Copper Chef egg cooker because it would make fourteen hard-boiled eggs at one time. But this thing is so easy to use that I just make what I’m going to eat. I can put a couple of eggs in, add the appropriate amount of water, put the lid on, turn it on, and walk away. I can have hot (or warm if I wait too long) hard-boiled eggs for my breakfast with no fuss, no muss! And I like them much better warm then cold.

But, and there’s always a but, it only makes two poached eggs at a time. And two poached eggs are not enough for my big ole mountain man.

So, this girl, who didn’t even want one, says, “If we bought another one then we could make four poached eggs at once!”

The Copper Chef was more expensive than the Nostalgia Walmart carries. The cord on the Nostalgia is beefier and has a ground plug on it whereas the Copper Chef doesn’t, and the Nostalgia has a beeper when it’s done and Copper Chef doesn’t. The Copper Chef will make fourteen hard-boiled eggs, if you need fourteen, and Nostalgia makes seven. Copper Chef comes with a separate poached egg tray, Nostalgia doesn’t, but it does have a taller omelet tray.

“We’d’ve been further ahead to just buy two of these,” I told Mike. 

>>>*<<<

I brought our outside girls in. I was getting worried about Callie, the calico on the left. She suffers from a respiratory issue that gets worse in the winter. The snot started building up on her nose until it was completely covered with a dry layer. But that wasn’t what really bothered me. What really bothered me was we had a couple of really, really cold nights. The pan of water sitting on the floor iced over. And Callie, rather than jump up to her sleeping shelf and snuggling under the blankets with Sugar like she normally does, had slept on the floor.

“Do you think it’s getting too hard for her to jump up there?” I asked Mike but he didn’t know. I went in the wayback and got a board to make her a ramp and the next morning she used it to come down from the shelf. I don’t know if she used it to ascend or not.

Callie is getting old. Thirteen, fourteen, we’re not really sure. Then two mornings in a row she didn’t get out of bed to come down for breakfast. I was worried enough that I wondered if she’d died in the night.

“Can we bring her in?” I asked Mike. “Then I can clean her up.”

“Sure. But you’ll have to bring Sugar in too.”

Sugar and Callie are inseparable. In the summer they sun together in the yard and they always sleep together at night.

We’ve got a cat condo that we bought many years ago for our old cat Missy. Our precious Baby Blue, who we later learned was blind or nearly blind from birth, used to wait outside the litter box when she heard Missy in there and ambush her when she came out.

Missy was not having any of that! She decided not to use the litter box anymore. Hence the cat condo and Missy was very content to have her own apartment. I’d let her come out every night while I cleaned her litter box and freshened her food and water, but most times she’d be back in before I was done.  

There have been times, over the years, where we’ve needed to quarantine a cat and used that. And the last time we used it was for Smudge. In his younger years he’d tear the house up at night so we’d put him in there before we went to bed. But it’s been months since he’s used it.

Callie is more docile than Sugar and I was able to carry her in the house in my arms. She freaked a little when I came in the house but I covered her face and we made it to the condo with no bites or scratches.

I didn’t dare try the same thing with Sugar. She wouldn’t hesitate to tear me to ribbons. But she did let me put her in the cat carrier. As I carried the carrier through the garage to the house she freaked and threw herself against the sides of the carrier. To get her in the condo I just opened both doors and let her transfer herself.

I gave them a couple of days to settle down before I tried to clean Callie up. I made a boric acid wash…

“Boric acid!” you exclaim.

Yeah. Pharmaceutical grade. It’s a teaspoon in a cup of sterile water (I boiled it). Callie didn’t much like me carrying her out to the operating table, aka the kitchen counter, but I was able to control her. I pulled the lid from the canister containing cotton balls and the little clink it made freaked her out. By the time I regained control she was sitting down in the sink. I took a cotton ball, dipped it in the warm solution and took a swipe at her nose. When I was able to see her nose, I was horrified! Staring back at me was something pink and raw. It looked like her nose was gone! I was horrified! I looked at the cotton ball and there was a nose cap. I looked back at her nose and pinpricks of blood were starting to bead up. I was absolutely horrified! Did I tell you I was horrified?

“I think her nose fell off!” I cried to Mike.

“What do you want to do about it?” he asked.

“Come and look at it,” I begged.

“No.”

“There’s nothing we can do now.” It was Friday night. “We’ll just watch it and see what happens.”

Well, poor Mike. He woke up several times in the night thinking and worrying about poor Callie.

“Let’s but some peroxide on a cotton ball and dab it on her nose,” Mike suggested.

That night we tended to Callie together. I held her and Mike did the nose dabbing. Then I cleaned her eyes, which she seems to enjoy.

As we stood there, between nose dabbing's and sneezes, I got to thinking how I squirted a little peroxide on Mr. Mister’s wound. I wonder if I can just pour a little on her nose. “Let me have the cap a second,” and Mike handed over the cap containing a little peroxide. 

Well! Let me just tell you that you don’t ever want to pour anything on a cat’s nose unless you want ‘em to tear up your operating room!

After examining her nose several times, I’m not so sure that she did lose it. I think it’d been covered so long that the skin broke down underneath it, much the same way your nails will do if you wear fake nails a long time.

Despite having used the peroxide every day since then, a crust is starting to form on her nose again.

“I’m afraid if we let it go that it’ll be like before. Red and raw when it comes off.”

There is no conclusion to this story because it’s ongoing.

Speaking of ongoing stories…

Mike laughed at me when he had a chance to look at More Trapper John. “Peg! Those aren’t fur stretchers! Those are pant stretchers! My mom used them!”

“Why'd she use pant stretchers?” I wanted to know.

“I don’t know,” was his answer.

Then my Miss Rosie saw More Trapper John. “If I’d’ve seen the picture I would’ve told you that’s what they were.

“Why'd your mom use pant stretchers?”

“So she didn’t have to iron,” she answered flatly. “It was my job to put them in and I hated that job. I’d’ve much rather ironed.”

Even though I found a picture of them on an auction site, side-by-side with fur stretchers and being sold as such, I believe Mike and Miss Rosie when they tell me they’re pant stretchers.

And that solves that mystery.

Trapper John sent me some photos of what fur stretchers should look like and also included photos of his biggest beaver along with photos of his dad and grandfather. They would’ve enhanced his story if I’d’ve had them. Maybe, when I have time, I’ll go back and stick ‘em in. Do you want me to let you know when I do that?

>>>*<<< 

Miss Rosie told me how much she loved the picture of Smudge on his shelf in the window above my sink. You gotta be careful about what you say to me sometimes. If I know you like something, I give you more!

I thought Smudge was looking quite dapper with his paw hanging down.

Then I caught him cat-napping. My movements caused his little eye to open and I couldn’t get my camera to focus on him. For some reason, this out-of-focus eye glaring at me between the chimes creeps me out a little.

Smudge was a bad boy! He wasn’t content just eating my spider plant. He squeezed past it and was digging in my jade plant.

“No!” I scolded and spritzed him a little with my water bottle. I did it sorta gently, if there is such a thing, because I didn’t want him to knock everything off the shelf in a panic to get away. It worked and he got down without tearing the shelves apart. I had to clean the dirt from both shelves. As long as I was at it, I took the spiderwebs out too. Then I put pine cones in the jade to discourage him from digging in it again. We’ll see if it works. 

>>>*<<<

Oh my gosh! Look at these signs in the snow!

I’d taken my kitchen scraps out to the weeds where I normally toss them and stopped dead in my tracks when I spotted these. I could almost see the imprint of a bird. I bet those are its feathers, and debated with myself about going back to the house for my camera. Yeah, yeah. I went out without it. There normally isn’t a lot to take photos of this time of year so I’m more lax about taking it everywhere. In the end, I set the scrap pan in the snow and went back for my camera. I sincerely hope you appreciate the lengths I go to for you.

 Then I decided to ask an experienced hunter and trapper what these snow signs say to him. “Trapper John, what story do these pictures tell you? They’re all taken in the same area. There’s no blood at the scene and only one tiny feather.”

“It looks like a hawk killed a small bird. I can see wing feather marks in the snow from where it took off after the kill.”

And there’s that. 

>>>*<<<

 Since I have a little room on the page, I’m going to tell you something that is of absolutely no import at all!

3003 Crystal Mazes. This is how this puzzle starts, my pusher right behind this crystal. 

Pushing it down wouldn’t work because I couldn’t get around it. So, I pushed it to the right thinking I could push it off the wall and get behind it. I did that and put all the other crystals in their gold squares. Then I went for the last one, pushed it off the wall, and saw I’d miscalculated. I couldn’t get behind him. My very first push was wrong!

288 pushes wasted! That’s what it took me to get to this point and I’d have to start all over again.

I grinned and shook my head. Stinkers! I bet they knew someone would do that and they probably grinned at their mischievousness. But I was smarter and solved it the next time I tried.

 Lastly, I’ve got this great shot of morning clouds.

It’s going to be fabulous when it turns all red and orange! In my mind’s eye I could see it just flaming! But it never did.

I know you’re disappointed. I was too.

 And let’s call this one done!

More Trapper John

          I teased you last time with more on Trapper John but my everyday jibber-jabber ran onto 22 pages when printed with all of the pictures and I thought that was quite enough for one week. So, this week we’re not going to take a chance of running out of room and we’ll start with More Trapper John. 

John, on his way to check his traps, stopped by to show me another method of trapping beavers. “This is what they call a ten-foot drowning cable.”

I wasn’t sure I’d heard right. “Drowning?” I repeated. “As in…” being trapped underwater, was the thought formed in my head but never uttered. John seemed to understand and didn’t make me spit it out.

“Yeah.”

“Okay.”

He went on to explain how it works. “Now, the way they come is with this S hook on here. Most people would attach this to their trap but I don’t. I put a quick link on it so I can switch out traps if I need to; say the pan gets broken or the jaws get popped out. When a beaver gets caught, he’ll swim down the cable,” John slid the chain down the cable to demonstrate, “and when he tries to come back up, he can’t.” John pulled back on the chain and the drowning lock locked into place.

Calling it a drowning cable is very apropos.

“Which is more humane?” I asked. Although I thought I already knew the answer, sometimes you like to hear what someone else has to say.

“The killer traps, which is what I like. But there are situations where you can’t use ‘em. If you’re doing animal control trapping, say the beaver is flooding somebody’s farm fields and he can’t make his living, he’ll hire a trapper or ask a trapper to come in and trap the beavers. The beavers get smart really fast. They’re not a dumb animal. Then you have to switch over and use a different kind of trap like a foot-hold trap, a cable-restraint, or a snare.”

“What’s the difference between a cable-restraint and a snare?” In my mind it seemed like it was the same thing. Not so.

“A cable-restraint is made so it only closes so far and doesn’t necessarily kill an animal. A snare is made to close completely. Snares are a last resort. I don’t think you have to be certified to use a snare but a cable-restraint you do.”

John had been busy winding the drowning cable back up while we chatted. “I just got these the other day and I was on my way out to check my traps and thought you might like to see one.”

I was interested but didn’t say so. My mind focused on the other part of what he said. “How often do you have to check your traps?”

“Every thirty-six hours by law. I check mine every day unless the weather is preventing me from getting to my traps. I was there yesterday and couldn’t find one of my traps because there’s so much snow, so I actually have my snowshoes and my…” John paused as he tried to remember if he put his snowshoes in the car. “Yeah, I got snowshoes…”

I laughed.

“And I have a snow shovel in the trunk. I should be able to make it out there today. I haven’t caught anything since I saw you but that’s just the way beaver trapping is. They don’t move every day. When they do, a lot of times they come out of the lodge, grab something off their feed bed, then go right back in.”

“They stay in where it’s warm,” I said.

“Right. And they can’t see well under the ice. With all the snow on it, it’s dark. I’ve cut holes in the ice and have to cover my head up to see a few inches into the water to see if my trap was sprung. Yesterday I couldn’t tell so I turned my hatchet around, stuck it in the hole, felt around for the jaws and I felt ‘em. It was still set.”

“So, how many beavers are out here?” I wanted to know. I never see any!

“Out here at the Game Commission building…” John counted, “Two… four…”

I wondered how he was counting. Had he seen them? Or knowing beavers and their behaviors, was he counting lodges or dens? I’ll have to ask him sometime.

“There’s at least ten to twelve beavers out here.”

“Cool. And they keep building a dam and the Game Commission keeps knocking it out, don’t they.”

“Sometimes,” John agreed. “They had a dam right off the road years ago that was taller than my head.”

“Wow!”

“Yeah, it was insane! It was one of the tallest dams I’ve ever seen in my life and I only caught one beaver out of there that year. Back then you were allowed to set right on the dam or the lodge so I put one at the lodge and it took two days before I caught one but it was like a 49-pound beaver.”

We talked about trapping season. “It opens mid-December. January, February is mating season.”

“They don’t want you to catch a mama beaver and leave the babies stranded, do they?”

“When a beaver is born it already knows everything it needs to know. They pretty much take care of themselves.”

A flash of the book Clan of the Cave Bear came to my mind. In the book the Clan, the Neanderthals, were born with all the memories of their ancestors. The men knew all the men stuff and the women knew all the women stuff.

“They live in family groups?” I asked.

“It’ll be the parents and the young of the year in the main lodge. Then you may have a secondary lodge or a bank den where the two-year-olds’ll stay. Then the spring they turn three they’re forced out. They go out on their own and set up housekeeping somewhere else. They go overland, they go up and down creeks. Otters do the same thing —” and then John remembered, “— that otters back out here again.”

“I didn’t even know we had otters!” I told him.

“I was looking at my last set and you could see where he was going up and down the ice.” John could read the signs in the snow. “He’d been there for a couple of days. He came over the dam, on top of the snow, and right between the support sticks for my killer trap. They stick up above the ice. I’m glad he didn’t go under the ice.”

John and I started talking about sizing your traps. “A one-and-a-half or a number two coil spring is the all-around best trap for anything. You can catch beaver with ‘em — by the front foot,” he clarified. “You can put a second set of beefer springs on ‘em and it’ll hold a coyote. That’s why they use traps like this because coyotes are very strong, so are beavers and otter.”

“So, you have to stake ‘em down good or you’ll lose your trap.”

“Right. I use rebar stakes that are eighteen inches long for my coyotes.”

“And you also have to check ‘em or they’ll chew their foot off.”

“No, they don’t… they don’t intentionally chew their foot. That’s a misconception. Try this. Put a rubber band around your finger and put it on snug and wait for a minute or two.”

I could see it in my head. The end of my finger, purple, swollen, and hard. I have brothers. It was one of them that showed the rest of us this neat ‘trick’.

“Then bite on the end of your finger,” John finished.

It seems like we maybe even did that when I was a kid. “You don’t feel it.”

John clarified. “You don’t feel it as much. Same thing happens with an animal. They get caught in a trap, they’re not chewing on their foot per se, they’re chewing on the trap. In the process they end up chewing on their toes underneath the jaws. They’re not gonna chew above the jaws because they can feel that.”

“Then they end up getting free.”

“Right. And this is the other problem with people who don’t know what they’re doing with trapping. They use a trap that’s too big for the animal. The animal comes along and steps in it and the trap’s so powerful it breaks the bones in the leg — those bones are like razors! As the animal moves around trying to get away those bones end up cutting the meat and connective tissues and the animal gets away. That’s why I stress and strive for as much perfection with trapping as possible and especially for that reason.”

“You don’t want to make an animal suffer,” I said.

“Right. And that’s why I’m so anal on checking ’em every day. Most people do. The state does allow you a little leeway, it’s 36 hours. And the other thing is, you catch an animal and say it’s alive, its buddy comes along and sees that and he’ll put two and two together eventually and he’ll avoid the set. I’ve seen it happen so many times. You pinch an animal or it steps on the dog…” John bent down and picked up a part of the trap. “This is the dog. The dog goes in and catches the pan.

If an animal comes along and steps on the very edge of the trap and catches the pan just enough for that trap to fire, it’s not gonna catch him but he’ll be smarter, he’ll know it’s there. Fox and coon are especially well known for this; if they feel something move around under their feet, they’ll dig around the edges of it and get under it. And when you get a trap-wise fox, they’ll intentionally dig underneath the trap and flip it over. My dad’s had fox take a crap right on top of a trap.”

I laughed as the vision materialized in my head. “Take that!”

“If you would try your normal fox trapping now with a dirt hole, your traps would freeze down and I’ve had it happen where the fox was walking all over the trap. I ended up having to set the trap so light a bare dusting of dirt would set it off. It took me two weeks to catch him and he was the only one I got that year so I ended up having it tanned.”

“Nice!”

“Animals are smart. People just don’t give ’em enough credit.”

          “We had a mama fox feed her kits with all of our kittens one year. We had a dozen kittens and by the time she was done we didn’t have any. She just kept coming back and coming back until she got ‘em all,” I told John. “Since then, we’ve had all of our cats fixed. No more kittens.”

          “Yep. Coyotes are known to go into someone’s yard — this is how smart they are — they’ll go into the yard, grab a dog’s chain and drag the dog out of its coop and the other pack members’ll descend on him and kill’im.”

          “They don’t do it to be mean. They’re just feeding themselves.”

          “Right. It’s just another animal to them. They don’t know the difference between a wild animal and someone’s pet. An animal’s an animal and if they can catch it, kill it, and eat it, they’re going to.”

          Our conversation took a bit of a darker turn here as John told me stories of just how vicious coyotes can be and I’ll spare you the pictures you’d create in your head if I were to tell you.

          John left and I went back to working on the final edit of Trapper John and getting it posted. Once done, I sent John the link to his story and he was pleased.

“I'm thrilled that I could share my knowledge with someone who has never been trapping. Your interest surprised me. It made my day when you told me that you were going to write about me. Thank you for making me part of your blog.”

One of the most interesting comments I received for Trapper John came from that beautiful West Virginia friend of mine.

“I loved your blog story and I have a confession — I have a crush on Trapper John!!!  First one I've had in years.  I’m so jealous that you got to meet him.”

I had a lot of fun with Trish’s long-distance crush. “I told John you had a crush on him.” Then I told her how to find him on Facebook. “Are you going to look him up?”

“I think I'm better off with just the crush!!” She is way too practical.

Then we got into a discussion on John’s age. “How old do you think he is?” I asked.

“Late 30's,” Trish guessed.

I know how old Trish is. “Too young for you?”

I’d expected her to give a flat-out yep. “Maybe,” came her reply.

 “You cougar, you!” There’s no accounting for crushes!

And her response made me laugh right out loud.

“I'm old, not dead!!”

          That very afternoon Trapper John got a beaver! He sent me a picture, which I was pleased to see. It’s a very nicely composed photograph and John gave me permission to use it. But I’m thinking, he could’ve stopped by and shown it to me!

          Just about then a car pulls in the driveway and it’s John! The first words out of my mouth were not, “Hi John!” or any other polite greeting. Instead, I said, “Listen! When you told me you got one today, I was going to give you hell for not stopping and showing it to me!” I grinned. “And here you are!”

          “Yeah, well I got this over on Spring Hill.”

          That means that John went out of his way to show it to me.

          “I thought you might like to see how these traps actually work. It’s just like a big mouse trap. It catches ‘em behind the head and snaps their neck.”

          “And they die quickly,” I state the obvious.

          “Yeah. That’s one of the reasons I like these traps so much.”

          “How do the feet feel?” I wanted to see what he felt like and touched him.

          “Leathery.”

          “They’ve got toenails…” I don’t know guys. I don’t know why I said that. Of course, they have toenails!

          “Mm-huh.”

          But John didn’t laugh at me for saying such a silly thing. Instead, he turned it into a teaching moment.

“Now these toenails right here are split and they’re split for a reason. That’s how they groom themselves; they clean their fur.”

“How old do you think he was?”

          “This is a two-year-old.”

          “And you can tell…” I left the question hang.

          “By the weight. A two-year old weighs in the mid-twenties, like twenty-five pounds, a three-year old’s like thirty-five pounds, and then anything four years and better you’re talking forty pounds plus.”

          I see John had sticks wired to the trap. Don’t laugh when you hear what I asked next. “So, what are the sticks there?”

          “This?” And he touched them. “This is bait.”

          I felt like an idiot. “Oh!”

          “You put these on the trap and set it near the feed bed and when they check it out, they catch on the trigger wire and set the trap off.”

          “Do they stink?” was my next question.

          “They have a musky odor that’s not unpleasant. Anyway, I’d better get going. It’s getting late. I’ll get this skinned and drop off the skull in a day or two.”

          “Thank you!” I’m excited to have a beaver skull.

          The next time I see Trapper John was when he brought me the skull. He came walking up carrying a plastic bag.

“Here’s your beaver skull,” John said handing me a plastic freezer bag.

It had eyeballs and everything! Yuck. “What would it smell like if I cooked him?” That was a question I’d been pondering and decided it probably wouldn’t be much different from cooking any other hunk of meat.

          “I don’t know.”

          “I’ve got wire cages around my apple trees. I’ll probably just drop it in there and let the ants eat it.”

          “Good idea.”

          “Thank you for this!”

          “Absolutely!”

          “How big did he come out to be?”

          “When I stretched him, he was about 47 to 50 inches.”

          “Do you have drying frames you put him on?” I’m not real sure where this question came from. I’d not been thinking about the process at all.

          “Most people use a four-by-four sheet of plywood. You use nails and kind of go around and make it into a round or oval. Most guys will flesh it out when it’s on the board or use a fleshing beam and scrap it. Right now I just skin ‘em, roll the hide up, stick it in a bag, and put it in the freezer.”

          “Do they make wire frames to stretch ‘em on?” After Miss Rosie read Trapper John, she told me that her father used to trap too. Then, my beautiful friend Joanie bought Rosie’s old family homestead and a couple of years ago I helped to clean up a couple of old sheds. One of the things I’d saved from the trash were wire frames. I had no idea at the time what they were for but I brought them home anyway.

          “Yep.”

          “I think I might have some.” Then I felt the need to explain how I came by them. “Miss Rosie’s father used to trap and my friend lives in their old house and when they cleaned out the shed, they were going to throw them away. I saved ‘em just because they were wire. I wonder if that’s what they are.”

          “If they’re like an oval shape, that’s probably what it is.”

          “They’re not oval, they’re rectangle.”

          “Rectangle?”

John sounded incredulous and I doubted myself. “Maybe they were for something else.”

          “They make things like that to store hides,” and he started to describe it to me.

          “If I showed you one would you know?”

          “Yep!”

          John waited while I went and got a few of them.

          “Are they something to do with…”

          “Nope,” John said after taking one. “A beaver stretcher will actually be round or oval in shape. I don’t know what these are.” He looked it over. “They’re made to be adjustable...”

          “Wanna take ‘em?”

          “Yeah. My stepdad might know or my uncles.”   

          “I’ve got more. If you can figure out what they are or have a use for them, you can have them. Just let me know.”

          Besides bringing me my skull, Trapper John brought me a surprise. “I brought this,” he said pulling a small jar from his pocket.

         “Is that the…” I trailed off but John picked up my thread.

          “Beaver lure. Castor and oil.”

          “Does it smell bad?” I wanted to know.

          “No, actually I find it a pleasant odor in light doses.”  

          John unscrewed the top. Had he offered it to me first, I might’ve hesitated. But he smelled it first and that gave me courage.

          I should’ve paid attention when John said light doses. I took a big ole honkin’ sniff and it was strong but not entirely unpleasant.

           “Oh my!” I said, a little surprised. “That’s not bad.” It did have some nice undertones. “I bet they can make perfume out of that.”

          “They do with skunk essence. And the reason they do is because of the way it travels in the air.”

“Attract them females!”

“Yep. With beaver lure, you make a set, you put a little beaver lure out, then the beavers come and investigate. They’re very territorial.”

“Did you make that?” I wanted to know.

“No. My dad actually got this for me.”

“But can you make it?”

“Oh, yeah. With the castor and oil sacs that I harvest from the beavers.”

“Does it take a lot?” I was wondering if it was like maple syrup. You need gallons and gallons of sap to make a little syrup.

“No. There might be a little alcohol or something like that in it.”

“To keep it from…” I let my question trail again.

“Jelling and freezing.”

“Now what do you do with that? Do you smear it on part of your trap or your bait or what do you do with it?”

“If I’m using like a leg-hold trap, I might smear a little on the top of the stake that I pound into the ground. Beavers pick up a pile of mud and sticks and deposit it on the bank then squirt the oil and castor on it and they call that a scent mound. The beavers do this as a way of marking their territory. I don’t do that, that’s just extra work. I try to be as quick as possible. Less disturbance, the less chance of tipping them off. I’ll just smear it on a stick and set it on the ground right behind the trap.”

“Have you ever felt bad about something you’ve trapped?”

“Yeah. Many years ago, I caught a fisher and two otters. I turned the one otter into the Game Commission and the other I let lose. The fisher we let lose but I still felt bad about catching it. I thought at first I was going to have to destroy him. He looked like he was injured but when I got close, I was able to use a choker on him and get him out of the trap. I held him down and looked at his paw. It was red but other than that it looked fine. So, I let him go and he took off like a bat outta hell, acted like he didn’t have a care in the world.”

I remembered  we once had a cat with a mangled front paw. We guessed she’d been caught in a trap. But she got around just fine. “An injured paw is something he could recover from on his own.”

“Easily, as long as they take care of it,” John agreed.

“Peg! Wait!” you say. “What’s a fisher?”

I already knew that a fisher is like a weasel but I Googled it for you.

 According to the Defenders of Wildlife website: Fishers are elusive, forest-dwelling members of the weasel family with long, slim bodies, short legs, rounded ears and bushy tails. Fishers are larger and darker than martens and have thick fur. Fishers are agile, swift and excellent climbers, with the ability to turn their back feet nearly 180 degrees allowing them to climb head-first down trees. Despite their name, fishers do not hunt or eat fish, but have a varied diet consisting mostly of small to mid-sized mammals including squirrels, wood rats and hares. Rampant loss of forest habitat due to aggressive logging of the past remains a problem, and unsustainable logging continues to impact fisher habitat today. Abnormally large, severe fires and poisoning by rodenticide used in illegal marijuana growing operations on public lands also contribute to the decline of this rare and charismatic critter.

I thought another fact about fishers was interesting. They’re the second largest member of the weasel family; only the river otter is larger. The picture, by the way, is from the internet.

When I sat down to write More Trapper John, I realized I should’ve taken a picture of John’s handsome face to kick my letter blog off with and despite having seen him three different times, I didn’t have one. I got on the email and asked John for a selfie and he sent me two. The one at the beginning of this letter blog has a rattlesnake skin in the background. “I hunt rattlesnakes too!” he told me.

I bet you went back and looked at the picture again.

And this is the other one which I had not intended to use. But since I have the room, I decided to share it.

Although John thanked me for writing a story about him, it’s us, you and me, that owe him a debt of gratitude. Not only for his interesting stories but for the education too.

And with that, let’s call…

“Peg! Wait! Wait-wait! What about your normal jibber-jabber and pictures?” you ask.

You’re right. My normal jibber-jabber and pictures are missing this week. Writing More Trapper John has used up my space and most of my weekend writing time — but I’m not sad about that. We’ll just view this as an opportunity to create an extra letter blog.

Oh! Don’t groan! I hear some of you groan! And I hear some of you cheer.

Let’s call this one done!