“Grandpa Loved His Squirrels”

Another reader reminiscence:

Reading todays Squirrel updates triggered some old memories of my youth. I spent my summers in southern Ohio on my grandparents farm. I had 10 aunts and uncles, all of whom had 2-5 kids of their own, so I had plenty of cousins to keep me company on summer break. We all slept in the hayloft of the barn.

Out of neccessity grandpa sent out all the cousins who were old enough to gather food. I’d spent many a hot day picking all sorts of berries, fruits and vegetables (blackberries, raspberries, mulberries, japanese raspberries, cherries, apples, etc), gigging frogs, catching catfish, bluegill, crappie and carp, shucking corn, stringing beans, helping grandpa slaughter and carve up a hog… As one of the older boys, I got to handle the singleshot .22LR rifle and crammed 15-20 cartridges into my pocket. We’d bring back anything we could kill for meat. Groundhog, opossum, raccoon, rabbit, and squirrel… Even a car-struck deer was fair game, if we could get to it quickly after the collision.

Grandpa loved his squirrels. On a good afternoon, I’d bring in 10 or so squirrels. Grandma would make thick, lumpy buttermilk biscuits, with a dollup of butter on top, a ladle of squirrel gravy over top of it. But grandma would save the best for grandpa. He’d have his own plate of biscuits and squirrel gravy, and another with scrambled eggs and squirrel brains.

Though I’m told there’s a version of Creutzfeldt-Jakob (Mad-Cow) disease in squirrel…