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| My granny along the banks of Peter Creek, Kentucky |
Crows call my focus to the treetops—a sign my saunter interrupted their feast of prey. Within a few steps, I find a dead rabbit in my path.
I occasionally encounter
this sad sight on my walks, the automobile’s intrusion of the natural world’s cycle
of capture, kill, consume. My consolation is the animal was spared a slow,
torturous death by carnivorous birds.
And the yapping
crows aren’t happy to be deprived their pickings and demand their free meal.
The rabbit’s lifeless,
dark eyes look up to me as I take it by a foot and throw it into the hedgerow.
I don’t want other vehicles running it over.
Do the crows thank
me for serving their breakfast? Well, I don’t know crow-talk, however, those
brass, black birds sound like they’re mocking me. But I don’t hold it against
them. This is a broken world, and I’m broken, too.
That’s why I walk
alone. To converse with my merciful Lord.
I resume my walk under the fair, blue sky and remember
the first spring in our new country home. Our three teenagers gathered by the
bedroom window facing west. A hideous, inhuman scream came from the tree line
along the road. Never had we heard anything so dreadful.
Later, a neighbor
informed me the sound was that of a rabbit in the claws and jaws of a predator.
I hoped and prayed my family and I would never hear that scream again. Thank
God, we haven’t to this day.
As I turned and
walked uphill, our first year in Addison Township flashed before me. Calling
upon the fortitude of my Scots Irish German ancestors, I began building our slightly
self-sufficient and sustainable homestead.
Homegrown food in
the refrigerator, freezer, and canned in the pantry, for instance, like my
granny did with her garden and hens. She gathered eggs and butchered meat birds
for her delicious fried chicken.
I began our little
farm with flowers and tomatoes, and soon learned rabbits are the gardener’s number
one foil. For they nibbled my chicken wire guards, yielding a half-empty
freezer and pantry to depress the woman who planted enough seeds and seedlings to
feed her family and neighbors.
That’s why Granny built
a strong fence around her garden, tall enough to discourage local men who drank
too much at Beulah’s place from pulling up her tomatoes and corn again.
A dairy farmer,
Great granny Hunt birthed ten children, one of whom she named Ollie, my granny.
Great granny hitched her team of mules to her milk wagon and loaded it with
crates of eggs, milk, and butter. She sold her farm products along Peter Creek,
Granny’s small mercantile included.
Fourth generation
McCoy-Hunt from Kentucky’s Appalachian Mountains, my somewhat agrarian life is
a mere remnant of my matriarchs’.
Dear Reader, I’m
satisfied with growing garlic, asparagus, raspberries, rhubarb, lavender,
peaches, pears, and apples. And gathering half a dozen eggs.
Yet, come spring, I’ll
plant again tomatoes, greasy beans, and collard greens in hopes to fill my freezer and pantry.
