A crazy way to get better vision

by

Ernie Powers

One Friday evening after school my two brothers and myself took our dog and went rabbit hunting.  Just south of our house was a section (640) acres) of meadow land; running through this was a slough; on each side of the slough was high grass – a fine place for rabbits.

There’s something else in there

Our dog chased a rabbit in a hole.  Otto (my brother) reached in the hole and pulled the rabbit out.  He said, “There’s something else in there.”  He put his hand in  again and something bit him.  We let the dog dig.  He dug till he came to a large, round pile of grass.

When he started to dig the grass out of the hole a skunk stuck his head out, then turned, and our dog found out what a skunk could do to protect himself.He sure did make the dog sick; he quit work right then. There was not a stick or a stone anywhere close that we could kill the skunk with.

My  brother said, “I’ve  got on a good pair of leather gloves he can’t bite through. I’ll just beat him with my fists'”  He got down by the hole.  The skunk stuck his head out.

Orion hit him and knocked him back in the hole. The next we knew Orion was down in the branch washing his eye. He said he could see better out of that eye than he ever could before, after it stopped hurting. 

That was the only accident we had. We took turns putting on the leather gloves and beating on the skunk. We soon killed that one, and another one came out.  We killed him.  We kept that up till  we had killed four large skunks. Our dog was on the sick list and could not help us. You can imagine how we smelled.

When we went to school Monday the teacher sent us back home. That suited us fine.  We went hunting again. We took something along to kill  our game, you may be sure.

We received $3 each for those skunks. They were coal black-not a white hair on them. We got stung on the price they were worth double that.  I was 11 years old then. I have trapped quite a bit since then, but that will  always stand out in my memory as our best catch.

(This was written by my Grandfather and published in the Springfield, MO. Newspaper around 1921/26 – Donna Causey)

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