TRAPPING HAS IT'S SURPRISES!!!!!!

GROWING UP ON THE FARM, IN THE ALLEN FAMILY, PROVIDED US WITH SOME INTERESTING EXPERIENCES.....

TRAPPING HAS IT'S SURPRISES

by Fred M. Allen\

During the years immediately following the end of World War II, times were hard as families on the farm struggled to make ends meet. We sought ways to find extra income to help meet our basic needs, especially during the winter months. Mama (Lorette Bell Allen) traded chickens and eggs to the chicken peddler each week in exchange for basic supplies as he drove his mobile grocery store our way. We used a hand-operated creamer to separate cream from milk and kept it in a large can until it was full and ready for the market. We killed hogs to provide pork, and of course, we ate fried chicken and enjoyed vegetables and fruit from our supply of about 500 cans and jars which we had preserved during harvest time, so we ate well.

My older brother, Bob, found ways to help bring in extra income by trapping along the Sandy Creek which ran through our farm. He trapped many opossums, dried their skins on a flat board, and sold them at the market in Paris. He and our daddy, B. Fred Allen, of Taylortown in southeast Lamar County, Texas, worked together to try to trap mink whose skins were much more valuable than those of the opossums. 

One day Bob ran his traps to see if he caught anything. Much to his surprise, he indeed caught something: not a mink nor an opossum, but you guessed it, a SKUNK. He studied the situation and decided to play a little game and find out how far the skunk could shoot his terrible-smelling spray which was its only defense against those who would harm him. Bob cut a small sapling similar to a ten-foot fishing pole and used it to jab the skunk. About the third time he punched the skunk, he learned an important lesson: the skunk did his thing and covered Bob with the awful-smelling spray which sent him home in a hurry.

When Bob arrived Mama refused to let him in or near the house as he was covered with skunk spray, so she ordered him to stay behind the chicken house, strip off his clothes, and wait for a tub of warm water to be brought for him to take a bath before he could put on clean clothes and enter the house. He also was told to burn his filthy clothes which he did. Later he would return to his trap, kill the skunk and remove him from the trap so he could continue trapping for mink. He learned the hard way that skunks can shoot their spray much farther than he had thought! He didn't forget that lesson.