Swamp Rabbits Tale
by Jeannie Travis
by Jeannie Travis
I’ll tell you another story of my childhood….As my Daddy would have told it…maybe……
One time me ‘n ol Tip went down there in the river bottoms after a gully washer of a rain and killed so many swamp rabbits I liked to not been able to tote ’em home. As I shot them long eared buggers I hooked a back leg of each one into my belt and they was so heavy I couldn’t even climb the fence when we got home…..Had to call Myrtle and the youngens to come take some of them rabbits off me ..You see, the water had rose up down there in the swamps until jist islands was left here and there…I waded around in my tall boots and me’n the dog killed rabbits till I about got more’n one man could tote….Me and Myrtle cleaned them good…{which aint hard as you know did you ever skin one,} and then we had to figger out what to do with all that fine meat…..A great bunch of it was saved out to fry up for supper but the most of it we ground up in the sausage grinder along with some sage , hot peppers , salt and black pepper and scraps of streaky lean bacon …..It made as good a sausage as you’d want to find! Myrtle went in there and soon had some sausage sacks sewed up on the old treadle machine A mort of it was stuffed in them sacks and hung in the smoke house alongside the hog meat…. She fried some of it nearly done though ,then canned it up for a fast breakfast some mornings when the stove wasn’t drawing good or the stove wood was wet…….
Jist in case you aint never heard of Swamp rabbits, they’re about the same thing as them Jackrabbits you hear about out West…..They’ve got long ol ears and mighty strong hind legs made for running…..I reckon the taste of the meat ‘s jist about the same, but one swamp rabbit in the skillet will make 2 or 3 of them little old cottontails…..I’ll tell you how big they are…One time ol Tip had been out roaming and he come to the back fence and barked till the kids went to see what was wrong…Well, he’d killed one of them big ol swamp rabbits and brought it home to’ his family’! Now Tip was a big dog…Shepherd and collie mix and about the size of a German Shepherd dog…He jist couldn’t get that
rabbit over the fence ….We thought that was awful nice of him to help feed our big family….