Yesterday I was traveling slowly to an appointment south and east of Lake Charles. It was down a two-lane blacktop road bordered by rice fields and cattle pastures. Something caught my eye and I slowed down, checking my rear view mirror for anyone following me. The road was clear in both directions. I put the vehicle in Park in the middle of the road and opened my door. There was a marvelous creature in the middle of the road, dead. The blood was fresh. The beast had been struck by a motorist early this morning, probably around daybreak.
A bobcat! Much larger than the common housecat, it's fur was beautiful, with spots running down the legs and underside. You can see it's short tail and understand why it's called a bobcat. This cat wasn't skinny. It was agile and muscular and fit, probably fattened on rabbits, rats, squirrels and maybe even a chicken from a farmer's pen.
I was sad that this ferocious feline was dead. As I looked at the teeth on this cat, I shivered to think that if this thing would come to life, he'd tear me to pieces.
It reminded me of a time twenty five years ago when I was crawfishing. A part of the 120 acres that I was crawfishing on bordered some woods on the north and east corner of a small patch my Dad rented from my Aunt Ida. It was from this patch of woods that raccoons would come out at night and feed on my crawfish. They would knock the traps over when robbing the crawfish out of them. The turned over traps sunk beneath the water and since you couldn't see them, you'd run over them with the boat, crushing the trap. Each trap cost $8. With each ruined trap, my anger toward the raccoons intensified.
In the mornings, I would walk through the woods with my Marlin lever action .22 rifle. Fat raccoons filled from their all-you-can-eat crawfish buffet all night would sleep in the crook of trees. I shot them out of the tree, relishing the loud "THUMP" of the raccoon as he'd hit the forest floor. But the population of raccoons exceeded my skill of killing them. I began setting traps. In talking to people, I had learned that raccoons are very curious critters. I was told that if you put some aluminum foil, shiny side up, on the trigger pan of a snap trap, the curious raccoon would reach his hand to touch the shiny part and SNAP! - you'd catch him. You did have to check traps often as they have been known to chew their leg off to avoid getting caught.
Within the next day or so, I came around the corner in my boat and heard quite the commotion going on. There was a shrieking sound, followed by a tumbling motion with dust clouds arising from the water's edge. I got a raccoon! But as I got closer, I realized I was wrong. I had caught a bobcat. I killed the cat and ended up giving him to a relative that sold furs. It was a beautiful animal, and I was sad that I had to kill it. That cat wasn't eating my crawfish. He was just in the wrong place at the right time. Curiosity had indeed killed the cat.
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