For the Love of Dads and Squirrels

My dad was a squirrel hunter.

My relationship with squirrels has been different.  Over the years we have fed peanuts to a number of quasi-domesticated squirrels —  Fuzzy with the black dot beneath his left eye, Baby who liked to peer in the window at breakfast, and Scrappy who was a freak of nature, born with no hair.  Before the winter cold of Scrappy’s first year we had a wildlife pro catch him and ship him off to his own condo at a home for handicapped critters.

I sometimes wonder what my dad would say about the privileged status of these city squirrels.  We ate squirrel when I was growing up.  Fried, like chicken, or stewed with dumplings.  Occasionally, a buckshot would be left in the critter and one had to be careful not to bite down and break a tooth.  This is not something I have talked about at dinner parties in DC, unless with good friends or around someone I especially want to shock. 

On the first day of hunting season in August Dad was up by 2 am, frying eggs and bacon for himself before driving the two hours to the Blue Grass region.  A friend of his had a farm there and it was densely populated with squirrels and other wild critters, and the walk in the woods was easy.  The land is flat as a pancake, unlike the Eastern KY hills that require a constant trek uphill or down.

By late afternoon Dad would be home, usually accompanied by a fellow hunter and a cooler full of critters to be cleaned and packed and frozen.  There were always stories to go along with these trips, sometimes funny, sometimes sad, and not always about hunting.  Once he stopped at an antique sale and brought home a big stack of old records for me.  I didn’t recognize and don’t recall any of them except the William Tell Overture.  I was in concert band at school and was vying for the coveted first spot to play the opening solo of Light Cavalry Overture, another classic.  

Yes, in Appalachia in the 50s and 60s, we studied Shakespeare and played the classics in public school!

All stories aside, Dad’s favorite place to stop enroute home after the hunt was the Dog Patch Zoo.  My dad loved the chocolate milkshakes in the zoo cafe.  We all thought they had the best milkshakes in the world.  Our world was small.

That world, in those days, did not accommodate quasi-domesticated squirrels.  A squirrel was either wild in the woods or dead in the pot.  My own world has grown exponentially.  I don’t miss squirrel stew in the least.  But I do miss my dad.

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Happy Father’s Day to All Dads Near and Far!