Swamp Rabbits Tale
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....