Drive - A Memior 9th Installment
in
Hamer. Everybody knew that.
“Hey,
slow poke, what are you doing lagging back there?” Russ was
striding out on his lanky long legs with real purpose that usually
caused me to run a few steps off and on to keep up; however, not
today. I was in no hurry to race home and face the Old Man.
“Just
thinking,” I said.
Russell
turned around and waited for me to catch up, “Well, stop thinking!”
he glared at me. “Spending a lot of time ‘in
your own head’
mulling over things ad nauseam is – well, ad nausea!” He then
crossed his eyes, whirled around, and started walking again.
“I
knew that.” was my lame comeback and the end of our conversation.
Still
we were only part way in our hike to our looming fate, and I started
to think about jackrabbits again. Howard believed one of the first
men to come into the area and actually staying here told Russ and me
about jackrabbits. “The word jackrabbit comes from a book by Mark
Twain,” Howard explained, “in which Mark Twain describes the
creature as a jackass rabbit, on account of the hare's ears looking
as though they belonged to a donkey. Later on this term shortened to
jackrabbit.” Howard went on “The white–tailed jackrabbit is the
type of ‘hare’ and the biggest hare I know of around here. This
jackrabbit has an adult length of over 26 inches including a tail
adding another 4.0 inches and a weight of 9.5 to 10 pounds. A
jackrabbit may slink away when approached, but if detected, they
bound away running up to 35 miles per hour and leaping up to 15 feet,
adopting a zigzag course. Most hunting of jackrabbits is done for
pest control or sport and many hunters will not collect the
jackrabbits they shoot. If you grab one, the jackrabbit better be
dead and if you dare snag it, you are well advised to wear heavy
leather gloves because they are fierce fighters with long, powerful
rear legs, sharp claws and chisel type front teeth.” I was agreeing
with Howard as he was explaining because I have been scratched up
pretty good fighting with these predators. “And don’t even think
about eating these germ bags!” Howard told us, “The rabbits host
many parasites including fleas, ticks, lice, and you could contract
tularemia!” “Tular–what?” I remember shouting. “It is a
particularly horrible disease they carry. I’ve seen them dying, and
the ulcers are not pretty. Jackrabbits do not migrate or hibernate
during winter and interbreed in the same habitat year–round,
probably causing them to become fierce to compete for food and
probably causes of the die off cycle and diseases they carry.”
We
rolled under the fine wire fence, the single wire electric fence that
separated our dairy cows from the fields, very carefully, a little
edgy about touching the wire. The Old Man always liked to rewire his
electric fencer giving it more of a shock than
500 more words tomorrow
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