More About Wolves

As I drive the backroads and even main roads of Louisiana, I see lots of roadkill on the highways.  Lots of raccoons, possums, deer, armadillos.  I see many mink that lay flattened and dead and do a little fist pump and rejoice as I pass them due to what they did to our flock of chickens.  We're still recovering from that.  Predators are just a fact of life.  If you have animals, there are always other animals higher on the food chain that are just obeying the instinct that the Good Lord gave them.

Fortunately, as human beings created in the likeness and image of God, we're higher on the food chain than they are, and many times, we are forced to take matters into our own hands.  Many predators are buried in our garden and grow wonderful vegetables for us.  A t-shirt I would love to have states, "Compost Your Enemies" on it.  That's not very Christian-like, now is it?  By enemies, I mean mink, raccoons, owls, possums, red tailed hawks, and coyotes.  Those do a lot of damage to livestock and birds around here.

In our last post, I said a comment about wolves.  I want to talk a little more about wolves.  Wolves have been extirpated in Louisiana.  That means none exist in the wild.  They disappeared in the area due to losing their habitat, being mixed with coyotes, and hunted out, despite once being numerous.  I've seen foxes in the area, but never a wolf.

But like I said, that wasn't always the case.  The news clipping below from the Basile Weekly from 1993 shows a group of serious looking characters posing with guns in front of a hotel in Oberlin, Louisiana in 1936.  They aren't playing around.  The article states that wolves had been killing sheep in the area and they were protecting the livestock.  The caption is cut off but there must have been a bounty on the wolves as it states "... for each wolf killed."  I wish I could find the first part of that sentence.  When I was crawfishing, there was a bounty on nutria rats.  You could bring in the tail of a nutria and get $5 for each tail!

The reason I have this clipping is because the gentleman second from the left in the overalls was my great-grandpa.  We called him Big Grandpa.  He was born in 1884 and died in 1973, making him 89 years old when he passed away. 

 I can barely remember him as I was young when he died.  I do remember going to his house and collecting eggs from a hen house with him, but that's about it.  He's buried in Durio Cemetery right smack dab in the middle of our family farm in Oberlin, Louisiana.  I tip my hat to these gentlemen.  If not for them, wolves might be hunting our goats as I type this on a Tuesday night.  I hear coyotes howl at night around our place, but fortunately no wolves.  Thanks Big Grandpa!