Trapped

 

One less ‘chuck

The boys have been trapping woodchucks left and right. I think they’re up to six between them, though it might even be seven or eight. Each of these has been snagged in a number 1.5 leghold trap, before being dispatched with a .22 rifle. Each has been skinned and dressed while hanging from a tree branch. The hides are being processed with an eye toward a pair of furred ammo pouches; the meat has been either stewed on the bone and made into chili, or frozen for future consumption.

The truth of it is, it’s all a little horrifying to Penny and me. It’s not the killing of animals we mind (and how could we? We kill more than our fair share, ourselves); it’s the trapping that gets us. Fin and Rye check their traps multiple times each day, but not throughout the night, and the possibility exists that any of these chucks spent multiple hours struggling against the unyielding metal jaws that, unbeknownst to them, had sealed their fate in the fraction of a second it took for them to close around the foreleg.

Our sons have been interested in trapping for many years, now. I’m not sure where it came from; perhaps it is merely a natural extension of their having been immersed in the visceral reality of life and death on a farm. For years now, whenever we’ve slaughtered pigs, the boys have kindled a fire, over which they’ve roasted bits of meat carved from the hanging carcass and slices of still-warm liver, heart, and kidney they’ve pulled from the cavity where the mechanics of life are contained. Their awareness of meat and all it entails is approximately as unclouded as it possibly could be.

About a year ago, after a couple years of thwarting and arguing against their desire to trap, after they’d practically worn through the pages of every piece of printed material pertaining to the subject they could find, Penny and I sought to find a mentor who could guide them through the process with as much reverence as possible. That is how we met Nate, who has spent a fair bit of time trapping with the Cree in Northern Quebec and on his own in these parts. Nate does not trap for money; nor does he trap to hang pelts on his wall, or because he thinks it would be “cool” to have a bobcat fur. He turns the coats of the animals he traps into clothing he actually wears, and he fills his stomach with their flesh and organs. In other words, the animals he traps become him.

Dressing and skinning a woodchuck

Observing my sons’ relationships to animals is fascinating to me. I see that they have the capacity in their heads and hearts to be both calculating and perhaps even cruel, even as they are so often incredibly loving and devoted to the creatures dependent on their care. Not long ago, Rye and Penny happened upon a hawk dining on one of his favorite laying hens (of the nearly two dozen we have), and he burst into tears. Both boys are forever stroking and touching the cows, or lolling about with the goats. They catch small wood frogs and hold them in the hollow of their palm, studying them intently, before setting them gently onto the forest floor.

And then they set their traps.

Smoking squirrel hides

I am sure that some of you will find it horrifying that we allow the boys to trap and kill wild animals. I offer no defense of our decision to allow our children to find their own way with the creatures of their world. In truth, I would rather they did not wish to trap, although I am glad to know we’ll likely have plentiful corn on the cob this summer, after a few summers of sharing much of the crop with the local community of woodchucks. I would rather they did not wish to trap, but since they do, I am grateful they have someone in their lives who is teaching them that such actions are not to be taken lightly, and that anything less than complete utilization of the animal in a manner that actually absorbs it into their very being is unacceptable.

The human relationship with animals has shifted dramatically in only a handful of decades. For most Americans in the early 21st century, animals are either embodied as pets, shrink wrapped in cellophane, or relegated to the page and screen. Frankly, I do not think this is healthy for either us or the creatures with which we share – however stingily – our world. In a way, I think this disconnect from animals – both wild and domestic – is far more disrespectful than my sons’ trapping. Because of course we are all responsible for the death of innumerable creatures; we are all party to an industrialized economy that spoils land and waterways, that paves over large swaths of land, that destroys habitat by thousands of acres each and every day. In this manner, most of us do our killing from a distance.

So while I do wish the boys weren’t interested in trapping, I’m tremendously grateful for their desire to immerse themselves in the lives and deaths of animals around them, and I admire their devotion to the process. I won’t go so far as to say the world is a better place for it, although I’m pretty sure their world is. The woodchucks, I suspect, think somewhat differently.