Fish & Crawdads

No. 11 of 31 -- Thermometer series

Something important to all of us these days is our opinion. We're overcome with opinions, clearly. I'm of the opinion people are wacko crazy, not knowing what's good for them. But just wait. Evolution, and its more immediate cousin, Mortality, will take care of it. Just you wait...

In the meantime, Fish and Crawdads is the answer, keeping the two separate, but knowing they go together. You want Fish, you need Crawdads, you need Crawdads to get Fish. We used to catch Crawdads and keep tubs of them in the shade of our bigger maple tree. They were happy, they couldn't get out, and they did their job, catching Fish. Which we ate.

Fish and Crawdads of course both have the meat of the goodie and the refuse of the baddie. (A term I just coined to have an opposite to goodie.) The meat of the Fish you prepare for meals, the baddie you discard, guts, heads, scales. On the Crawdad, the meat is a small white piece under the tail, big to the Crawdad but small compared to the baddie. And some of them go full King Kong with baddie, enormous claws and heads, then down to, at best, an above average goodie.

Now, these days, your opinion can be the most cantankerous part of yourself. We can stand your loud grating voice, as long as you're paying dues, but if you can't stifle the a-hole opinions, it might get you killed. I personally don’t know very many people who’ve gotten killed for their opinions. If I knew of one, that's someone I wouldn't have had much to do with in the first place. My opinion, Steer clear of certain death!

What we’re concerned with these days is the blog, keeping it healthy, keeping track of it with these great thermometers -- boxes and boxes of beautiful thermometers -- and seeking its survival and prosperity in a world of readers who frankly don’t know their digestion outlet from a hole in the ground. Let alone what to do with it, although I suppose everyone has the basics of that down by simple nature. One important clue, it's not for cucumbers. So we've got that much, but what we haven’t all got is an understanding of the process scientifically. A baby has the diaper strapped on but has no clue what for.

As this great effort goes forth -- filling thermometers, not diapers -- we shall do it in a similar spirit. Doing our best along the way, not worrying too much, and not even trying to understand the steps. Just doing it and worrying about the results when we clean up. But one thing of huge importance is not getting down in the dirt with these bastards and their crazy opinions! Because it'd only spring back on us. So we need a signal. Some bastard shows up, we whistle. That's the signal. Then when we're mostly out of view, twirl your finger by your ear. Meaning he's loopy.

Politics, yes, politics is always in the air at our meetings. But we’ve come this far — I don’t want to ruin it by lambasting too many folks and prematurely driving a wedge between us in spirit. I have to keep telling myself, "Fish and Crawdads," the mission, the goal first. Then someday, after all this is a huge success, only then can our meat of the goodie be openly telling them off and where to get off -- maybe even ceremonially stripping them and attaching Crawdads to the fleshier bits --  then showing them the door.

We used to get rid of fish baddie by dropping it to the turtles, enormous turtles, like a yardstick across. That's a good way to get rid of things. I saw it happen. And no one ever got caught.

How Easy Do Rabbit Heads Pull Off?

I have a bunch of rabbits in my yard. I see them everyday. They haven't been thinned out now for generations, meaning rabbit generations. Grandpa used to make traps for them, and we'd eat a lot of rabbit. But since his death, I have pretty much given up the old ways. Now I eat store-bought food, and I can't think of the last time the store had rabbit.

I used to go hunting for rabbits. Of course this was an activity that came from my grandpa and the other male members of the family. We'd get up bright and early, between September and February, and head out to the ditches in the country. You needed a .410 shotgun for rabbits. But you couldn't legally have your shotgun already put together in the car, so you needed to stop, get the gun pieces, put it together, and get it loaded, and hope, in all that time, that the rabbit wasn't already gone. Rabbits must be very dumb, because we'd still get lots of them.

As for the skinning of a rabbit, naturally it was the same whether you shot them or caught them in a trap. The first thing you do is pull their head off. And it's remarkable, but there's nothing easier in the world than pulling off a rabbit's head. You put it under your shoe or boot, holding it by the back legs, and pull. You don't even need to strain yourself, because their heads come off like they're held on by a single thread. Nothing easier. Maybe waving hi.

These days, to tell the truth, I hate killing anything. The other day I destroyed the appearance of an iPod player to rescue a gnat. That's how much I hate killing. Although, to be honest, I've killed a few bugs that have suddenly landed on me. It's just an instinctual reaction, happening just that quick, and didn't come from my considered judgment. A small spider was in the sink and I was very considerate of its well-being. But back then, we ate rabbits, squirrels, pheasants, turtles, raccoons, 'possums, and every variety of fish. I was raised by people who lived through the Depression. We ate dandelion plants from the yard! And it was all good, too...

That meant I'd personally get a rabbit every now and then. And it was actually not that disagreeable to pull off their heads. They're obviously designed to come off easily. God knew they'd be way down the food chain, so why give them good neck muscles? Connect them with the sinew equivalent of Scotch tape and be done with it. A rabbit gets up in the middle of the night for a midnight snack and trips over a rock ... whoops, lost his head!

I said that about God and the food chain. That might be the real story on rabbits' heads. But there's other critters down there with them, squirrels and fish come to mind, and their heads are on good and secure. I can't remember what we did with squirrels, but obviously their heads don't come off as easily as rabbits, because that's something I would remember.

Rabbits' heads are barely attached. We can go our whole lives without seeing another human decapitated. Not rabbits.