The Wall of Horror

Speaking of missed opportunities, my Redneck Grandpa once decided that he wanted to shoot one of the bears on our property. See, we lived in an old farm house way up in the freakin' middle of nowhere and by nowhere, I mean we had a TV but we couldn't get reception. So yes, there was a lot of Three Amigos, The Princess Bride and Good Morning, Vietnam watching going on. It gets stale after a while. Also, we cried whenever we missed the school bus. It was a sad, sad day when we missed the bus, usually followed by walking down the road until someone picked us up and gave us a ride the rest of the 20+ miles to school. But I digress!

So we had these three (or more) bears that visited us at night and ate blackberries off the bushes that surrounded our large plot of land. We didn't mind the bears, they stayed on their side of the bushes, we stayed on our side. Especially at night. It was a win win situation for all. But when Redneck Grandpa heard about the bears, he decided that one of them would make good bear sausage and steaks.

While we sat in the house waiting for dusk when the bears generally first show up, Grandpa told bear stories from his youth and his trips to Alaska, getting us all worked up by the scary stories of grizzlies. Mom decided it was time for us to put the goats, calves and chickens up so my sister and I headed outside to put away the animals. We were walking the goats to the chicken house when we suddenly heard gunshots. It turned out Grandpa was already outside shooting at the bears! Except, he didn't shoot a bear, he shot one of our pet calves. He had gotten so worked up by the bear stories that he shot the first thing that moved - our calf Dolly who was enjoying a few blackberries before bedtime.

He didn't kill her though, the bullet went through the fat between her jugular and the outside of her neck. Unfortunately, she died a few days later from asphyxiation caused by swelling (or something) after someone tried chasing her down to get her medication. I don't know all the details, I think I put them behind The Wall of Horror. But I do remember seeing her later that day in the back of Grandpa's truck, laying down with her legs sticking out straight and her gut all hollowed out. I don't know how that didn't make it behind The Wall of Horror.

It gets worse. When Dolly came back from the meat packaging plant, my sister and I took felt tip pens and drew pictures of little cows on the packages and wrote things like "Dolly's steak" and "Dolly's hamburger." It was our way of dealing with the pain. Yes, we ate our own pet calf that we hugged, kissed, played with and had bottle fed since age two days. We were poor. And hungry.

Redneck Grandpa never did get one of those bears.

A missed opportunity

As I have already mentioned, my Redneck mom loves to freeze things. And not just normal things like meat, vegetables and fruit. I'm talking about animals. She once had a cougar in her freezer that was waiting for a trip to the taxidermist. I didn't know it was there until I was helping her look for something in the chest freezer and she said, "Here, hold this." Though it was wrapped in plastic, I could tell it was the leg of something. And then I saw whiskers poking out of a hole in the black plastic bag. I try not to ask too many questions but sometimes you don't have to ask, the evidence is right in front of you. Even if you don't want to know.

Anyway, so my Redneck Grandpa wanted strawberry shortcake for dessert and I'll tell you, I saw this as an opportunity. I told Mom, "Let's stick the cougar tail out of the freezer door and then ask Grandpa to go down and get some strawberries for the shortcake." Unfortunately, Mom didn't think it was a good idea. Too bad because Grandpa has since passed on - a missed opportunity for a good laugh for all, even Grandpa (after he recovered). But I still chuckle at the thought of Grandpa's huge eyes and the big stories he would have had for us about the cougar that almost got him.