Road Kill Reminiscences

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.

A Rewind from the Crawfish Boil

On Good Friday we had a crawfish boil at the house.  We posted about it last week.  We ate until we thought we would pop, and then we peeled the remainder for crawfish scrambled eggs and a big crawfish etouffee that Tricia cooked up the next day.  Delicious! 

Family Crawfish Boil April 2020 

Crawfish always bring back a lot of memories...  Each and every year growing up, we had crawfish boils where we lined a table with newspaper and poured hot spicy crawfish on top.  We would encircle the table like vultures, elbow to elbow, peel and eat while laughing and visiting with family, friends, and neighbors.  A true social, back yard party that went on every year across the state.  In springtime you could just smell the spices wafting through the air when neighbors boiled crawfish.  The roar of the propane, festive music playing, and the anticipation of crawfish, corn, and potatoes about to be poured on the table.  Allons Manger!  (Come on, let's eat!)

Crawfish

As we were eating them on Good Friday, I was telling my family about how we would catch them as a very young kid - probably 6 or 7 years old, but I still remember it.  My family would ride out in a pickup truck to the farm in Oberlin, LA.  We would take a dirt road to a spot to the northern side of a rice field.  There was a pond there.  We would unload nets.  They were square cloth mesh supported on all four sides with stiff wire rods that met in the center on top.  There was a loop where we'd tie a string to lift the net out of the water.  In the center of the net was a string.  We'd tie chicken necks, "melt," or bacon to the center and drop it to the bottom of the shallow pond.  After a little bit, we'd pull the net up and remove the crawfish that would cover the net.  Rinse. Wash. Repeat.  After a while we would have enough for a boil.

A sack or 35 pounds of fresh caught crawfish

In the early 1980's, my grandfather hoped to instill in me an entrepreneurial spirit.  He had a welder in Eunice, Louisiana weld an aluminum boat for me.  He also purchased a number of sacks of 'seed' crawfish and we stocked a 24 acre pond (not far from the pond I explained in the paragraph above) with crawfish.  He also purchased a number of crawfish traps for me.

The boat was powered by hard-work, determination, and desire.  I would pull the boat and my brother, my sister, and friends would pick up the traps, dump the catch into the sorting tray, re-bait the trap with cut up fish, and fill onion sacks with crawfish we caught.  We would sell them to people in the community wishing to have crawfish boils.  This was several years before crawfish farming turned into the burgeoning industry that it is today.  My brother, to this day, never fails to bring up his grievances to me regarding this business venture.  He says that I was running a sweat shop and that he never was paid for his labor.  

I must have pulled him around that 24 acre pond hundreds of times, catching thousands of pounds of crawfish.  Sometimes the traps contained snakes, too.  That'll always give you a scare when you pick up a trap with a big, fat water moccasin in it.  It was fun, but it was honest work, too.  It was also smelly work!  Prior to crawfishing, I would chop up catfish heads, buffalo (carp), and other trash fish to use as bait.  The hot sun and sweltering heat would quickly make the tub of cut up fish and fish guts ferment.  The stench permeated the air.  It also was next to impossible to remove the scent from your hands.  I finally cut up lemons and washed my hands with them and that worked to some extent.

Twenty something years later, my crawfish pond would expand to be 124 acres big and my boat was powered by a Honda engine instead of pulling it manually.  Crawfish farming was a fun way to make a living.  It is one of those times where you enjoy immediate gratification seeing the sacks of crawfish pile up in the bottom of your boat.  You would always want to catch as much as you could before Good Friday as that is when the price usually falls. It always gave me a sense of pride, knowing I was providing the main ingredient to more than a meal, but an experience that everyone looked so forward to.

Although I no longer crawfish for a living, it remains a fond memory of my childhood that extends into my adult life.