Fragments From Floyd

If I had to, could I kill in order to eat? Should I, again this year, set out with a gun on my shoulder pretending that, if I don't kill, we will not eat? Shall I pretend to find any satisfaction in the taking of the life of a squirrel, for gosh sakes! a glorified tree-climbing rodent that makes more gravy than meat? I dunno. This I pondered as I watched the tiniest of squirrels-- our Mountain Boomers or Red Squirrel-- in the walnut tree by the garden yesterday.

Late in the afternoon, backlit against the low sun, the dazzling outline of an arboreal acrobat ran sprints to the end of every branch holding one last walnut. Too big to carry back the way he had come, a little squirrel paw reached out and lightly tapped the walnut-- three times as large as the creature's head-- sending the blackened lump falling kerplopp! to the gravel road below. There, passing vehicles will cooperate in the gathering of winter's larder by not only dehusking but cracking the kernel as well. Ingenious, I thought, and for this cleverness you shall live. And I took my make-believe gun and walked up the New Road toward the head of the valley.

More squirrels everywhere! Gray squirrels fat and meaty and naive of predatory hunters who view them across their gun sights, there, sitting on a pine stump, turning a nut in their dextrous little paws like corn on the cob, unafraid. And then a fox squirrel-- the largest North American squirrel-- stopped in the grassy road ahead of me lifted himself up on his haunches with that elegant tail curving up his back to the top of his head, mocking me. My crosshairs were only mental, and he knew this. I've always wanted to get close enough to get a really good look at the secretive fox squirrel, but I do not want to hold a dead one in my hands.

Bow season started several weeks ago. Rifle season for deer starts in mid-November, and in our county, it will run for two additional weeks this year, either sex legal all season. Deer, lacking any natural predators, are ruining gardens and orchards and sending auto insurance rates here soaring. And so I will have my hunting seasonal dilemma again this year. There is enough meat on a deer to make a lot of meals of low fat protein. They are a nuisance and their numbers need thinning. And I could sit at my desk and shoot one over by the barn without getting out of my computer chair.

But, I am not a hunter. Not that kind.