Catching Rabbits and Birds.

This is the idea of the bird trap!

This is a nice rabbit trap. mine was the same design,  just not quite this professional.


When I was six years old we moved to the town of Burlington, NC. The first impression I remember was seeing squirrels running on the electric wires down town.



We were moving from the country where at six I had already trapped rabbits that mama fixed for supper. We were not too poor to purchase food, it was just the thing to teach boys as they grew up. Dad had made my first rabbit box and showed me how to find rabbit paths and place the box close to a path with a piece of apple in it. He explained that a quarter apple or an apple core was better than a whole apple, because cutting it released the smell. I wasn’t always lucky, sometime I went a week without catching a rabbit. Sometimes Dad released it because it was too small.


Now here we were in a ‘city’ and if squirrels were this plentiful, rabbits would be a synch. To a six year old disappoint doesn’t last long. I settled quickly that rabbits were not around BUT birds, yeah!


Then Mama knowing things I did not know, but knowing how to occupy two energetic kids (Shirl & I) showed us a trick of a card board box. Now I was gonna be a bird trapper. Tie a string to a stick, place bread crumbs under a box that is held up by your ‘prop stick’. Hide and wait for the millions of birds that were about to be trapped. Mama kept me busy with that. Shirl didn’t like the idea of trapping the pretty birds and left me to the manly task of catching supper. I don’t remember catching ONE bird, but I came close and it kept me replacing the stick saying I must be faster.


Watching my grand kids, I wonder how many would be patient enough to hide and hold that string just waiting for tweety bird to walk unsuspectingly under the box. Note to you that do not know, BIRDS ARE FAST!


Yesterday our grandson was nearly arrested in Belmont. The crime? Heading down town on his skate board. The cop used the lights and siren. No skate boarding in Belmont anymore, new law. So his bottom lip was dragging the ground. I suggested he and his buddies make an appointment with the city council. I hope they do it.


I believe Jen’s daughter was the one who got really bored when the power went out during a storm. No TV, computer etc. Probably not an isolated case.


Thanks for coming this way.


NIte Shipslog


PS:


The dot over the letter 'i' is called a 'tittle.' Just in case you did not know.