Killer Squirrels
I got in a fight with a greenbriar the opening day of squirrel season. If you had seen me anytime during the next two weeks, you would have spotted a long, black, cruel looking scar slashed diagonally clear across the back of my left hand that looked as if someone had taken a box cutter to me.
Blood went everywhere, exactly what you would expect from someone taking an aspirin a day along with several other blood thinners. “Aw, it ain’t nothin’, Momma,” were the first words out of my mouth to everybody I met during the next two weeks.
The worst thing about the “wound” was that towards the end, I began to like all the attention I was getting, and even began to feel as if it was deserved. I know this because one day I caught myself working into the discussion of same phrases like, “The squirrel attacked me…” and, “It gave a little growl and jumped on me from out of a tree…” the word “greenbriar” never even coming up.
The day I nearly died from the greenbriar/squirrel attack, I was hunting up in Osage County with legendary Daily Oklahoman outdoor writer Glenn Titus, an old friend, who now lives in Troy, Montana. Glenn and his wife Oleta were visiting relatives in the area, and spent a couple of days camped at our place out on Baker’s Branch.
One of those days was Glenn’s birthday. I think he turned 80, and I’m pretty sure he won’t mind me telling you that. He’s still writing, still making movies and taking still photographs, the things that got him involved years ago in state conservation politics while working for the late Wendel Bever, Director of the Oklahoma Wildlife Department during its period of greatest change in favor of the license-buying sportsman, and as the aforesaid Outdoor Editor of the Daily Oklahoman. Glenn was the first ever non-Okie hired by the OWDC, and was a good one, working in his job as The OWDC Director of Information-Education.
Glenn has for the last 15 years in a row celebrated his birthday with a squirrel hunt. Could one be arranged, he wanted to know, during his visit? He didn’t want to break the string. Of course. I knew some places.
That day came and we had fun prowling the woods like a couple of kids skipping school, remembering old names, old places, checking out turtles, western glass lizards, and old, giant tree trunks big enough to crawl into. We shot not a squirrel, nor did we even see one, possibly because of all the commotion caused by my belt knife, hand to hand duel with the hybrid grizzly-squirrel, which I barely survived. I didn’t even mention all the noise, but, as I said, blood went everywhere. We had fun, anyway.
One day this past week, I was in Don and Chris Parks’ clothes cleaning establishment next to the post office in Sand Springs. Don, Chris, and family have done my cleaning for the better part of 40 years. I particularly like the job they do on my woolen hunting clothes. Don noticed immediately the scar on the back of my hand, and mentioned it.
“Aw, it ain’t nothin’, Don. I got attacked the other day by a mountain lion while I was hunting squirrels up in Osage County.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. I killed it with my Leatherman Tool, or I wouldn’t be here right now.”
“Why didn’t you use your gun?”
“It jammed while I was fightin’ off the rest of its family. There was either five or 15 of ‘em. They was movin’ around in a big ol’ flyin’ ball of fur and fangs so fast I couldn’t get a good count on ‘em.””
“You know,” Don said, “my grandpa Edwards was a squirrel hunter. He lived over on Fifth Street across from the Assembly of God church. One time he was sittin’ at the base of a tree, and got up to move to another spot, and put his right hand on the top of his shotgun barrel to push himself up off of the ground, and blew off his hand, everything except his index finger and right thumb, just as neat as if you’d taken a meat cleaver to his hand.”
“We’ll never know what got in that trigger mechanism to make that gun go off on his way up, either,” I added.
“No, we won’t. The worst part of it was he was a carpenter, and a righthanded one. The hand healed perfectly, and completely. He went right back to work hammering and sawing with just that thumb and forefinger.” Here Don began to laugh at some remembrance or other. “That finger and thumb got so strong, if he grabbed your neck muscle and pinched, it’d paralyze you.”
“Did he go back to squirrel huntin’ ?”
“Oh, yeah. He still had his thumb and trigger finger. He didn’t stop doing anything he used to do. He worked on houses ‘til he was 87 years old.”
“How come ‘im to quit?”
“Well, he fell off a roof one day, and broke three of his ribs. I was talking to him about it soon after it happened and (here Don began to laugh again) he said, ‘Hell, I’d a been alright if I hadn’t hit that gas meter on the way down.’ “
At that point, I
paid my cleaning bill, picked up my clothes, and headed out the door while
sticking my wounded left hand in my pocket, for no apparent reason.
Oklahoma’s squirrel season opened May 15th, Glenn’s birthday, and runs through January 31st. The daily limit is 10 squirrels, possession limit 20. While I’m thinking about it, Grandpa Edwards lived to be either 94, or 111; I can’t remember which. Probably the latter.
© 2009 Conrad M. Vollertsen
Editor's Note: Glenn Titus died August 15, 2020 at the age of 90.
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