Somewhere in Allen County there may be a truck big enough to carry all the fish and game I’ve carried home from my outdoor adventures of the last seven decades.
Deer alone, at better than 30 and all but one a buck, would take up a good chunk of space. So would literally thousands of critters sporting fins, feathers and fur.
With that history in mind, it may seem a little strange my experience with a spider the other day.
Shuffling into our bathroom, I noticed a little arachnid eyeing me. Filthy thing, I thought, and grabbed a few panels of toilet paper with the idea of squashing it against the floor.
The spider, deducing it was at risk, sidestepped around a toilet paper tower — where we store that necessity — went to the wall and scooted to a corner. The little guy hunkered down with no chance of retreat. I was seized by remorse at the thought of what I was about to do.
Of all the things I had in mind, killing a lonely little spider was dangling off the bottom of the list. I sympathized with its plight.
Soon, though, knowing wife Beverly would do the task if I didn’t, I sent the little spider to that great web in the sky with a few shots of a spray cleaner.
(An aside: I read recently in places where birds are thick, spider web patterns are infused in large windows in such a manner they don’t interrupt light or viewing by humans. Birds instinctively avoid spider webs, and windows that appear thusly.)
Later, I thought about the spider’s death and how insignificant it would seem to most anyone, but how for a few seconds I had to steel myself to pull the trigger on the spray bottle.
I also thought back to experiences I’ve had with other living things that became deceased soon after we met.
I remembered the sorrowful eyes of a little coon, snagged in a trap under tree roots one morning when I was running my trapline before rushing back to town for high school classes. I thought about a big buck, left immobilized when my shot went a little high and wide and broke shoulders of his front legs.
I even recalled a big flathead that put up a heck of a fight before I could take him off a trotline, how completely worn out he was, but had the wherewithal to slowly squirm on the bottom of my old jon boat.
Maybe it’s age and the realization of my own mortality that has me much less eager to add to my bag.
I still fish a bit but it’s mostly for bullheads, which I toss back. I’ve come up with a little game to see how many I can catch without them swallowing the hook, a trait the little gobblers have had as long as I can remember.
I still hunt deer, but in the past several years I’ve found myself making all sorts of excuses not to shoot several nice bucks — too late in the day, too much trouble to load, unsure of what might be in the woods or fields behind them.
Having said that, I do have one more space in a double panel of antlers posted on the wall of my garage, saving it for one last big buck — or at least that’s what I tell folks.
