Tracks in the Snow by Janean Baird (my niece/my brother’s oldest daughter)
Janean sent this blended memory from her childhood that made its way into a recent conversation with her older son. Today, my first big snow day in St. Louis, seemed like a good day to post this. When we were growing up on the homeplace in rural Illinois, on the bluffs above the river, all the way up through the time I was in college, we ran figure-4 wooden rabbit traps…that’s what Janean (a mostly town-reared child) is referring to. Janean writes from Bloomington, Illinois.—JGR
Tracks in the Snow (not rabbit tracks!)
This morning we had a fresh dusting of snow on the ground. After a light dusting earlier this week the grass is nearly covered now.
As I raised the window blinds in the family room, I noticed rabbit tracks in the snow and called T. over to see them. I was thinking of my Dad and how he enjoys hunting rabbits in the snow.
T. said there were some bigger tracks out front and called for me to come see them. We stood side by side and gazed out the front picture window.
I smiled when I saw the tracks and told him if he followed them the only thing he’d catch would be the paperboy. The tracks went across the yards from one porch to the next. He was right; they were bigger than the rabbit tracks.
T. didn’t know who the paperboy was; I explained how our paper arrived each day. Since the newspaper bills us through the mail, it’s not the same as when the paperboy would turn up on the front step for payment and we’d call for Mom or Dad to come pay him.
I knew about the rabbit traps when you were growing up and the Christmas Dad made them and gave them to himself. When I wrote the note I was referring to him tracking rabbits in the snow with a rifle. As recently as last winter he called to tell me he had called someone to get permission to go hunting that day for rabbits in the snow.
A good friend from college sent this reply to my initial e-mail, “That’s so funny! He’s very observant! When we took the brownies on a nature hike, we kept finding dog prints in the mud and the girls decided it was probably a bear or a mountain lion.”
Yesterday we got a real snow that covered the grass. We’re thankful it wasn’t ice first. Not sure of the total yet.