Excerpt #2 - Tales of a Texas Boy

Excerpt from Tales of a Texas Boy

Rattlesnakes and Jackrabbits

We didn’t see the jackrabbits as often, but we knew when they’d come in the middle of the night ‘cause we’d see the holes they’d gnaw in the granary walls. The better the crop, the more jackrabbits there’d be. I guessed the one would beget t’other. Around these parts, we called them deer rabbits as they appeared to be as big as deer. Of course, that was also just a joke, but if you see a jackrabbit’s ears sticking up behind a mesquite bush, you’d swear it was bigger’n the seven or eight pounds they’d usually weigh.

Because the local farmers and ranchers saw ‘em both as a big problem, on occasion they’d get together and go hunting. This mostly happened in the spring or fall when the rattlers were birthing. The reason was if they found a rattler’s den, they could kill upwards of a hundred babies at one time. In the meantime, the men could also be looking for jackrabbits.

Up to fifteen, twenty men would fire up their trucks and head out with their .22s and a bunch of boxes to collect up the jackrabbits. The jackrabbits were tough, but could still make a passable stew, so no sense in letting ‘em go to waste.

A big part of this expedition included moonshine. The hunters would head out in the early afternoon and start drinking right off. By dusk, most of ‘em couldn’t hit much of anything, but was havin’ a lotta fun anyways. The hardest part of the trip was avoidin’ being shot by somebody else. Mostly, though, these men knew what they was doing even when they could hardly see straight. I was glad Pa wasn’t a drinker as I’d see how stupid the men would act. I guess that would be one more reason why I respected my Pa.

Read the rest of the story and more in Tales of a Texas Boy.

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Tales of a Texas Boy is available in Large Print on Amazon. It's also in ebook format on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Smashwords. And if your father has vision issues beyond the help of large print (as my father did), the audio book is available at audible.com.