I killed a squirrel.
On purpose.
I have long had dreams of living a life sustained by the land. Of watching goats put on a ballet in a field of Chinese Silvergrass. Of taming the bad hair days of highland cattle. Of canning midnight blue and indigo juneberries.
I’ve fantasized this rose-tinged, little house on the prairie dream. Hands calloused, back tough like tungsten, full of life as the April well is with water. Minus the chin-to-ankle cotton dresses draped in bread flour-splattered smocks. I’ve fallen in love with ideas. With the slowness of watching a quilt grow larger weave by weave. With watching bees pollinate the clusters of small blush petals on leafy green sweet potato leaves. With never again buying plastic suffocated meat from the grocery store. But not, absolutely not, with the idea of hunting.
I have always been the kind to release stink bugs out the back door. The kind to give spiders a proper burial. My insides pang at the idea of death. My insides rage like dry timberwood set aflame at the idea of killing.
Yet living a life off the land means not only giving to it but taking from it. I knew that if I chose that life, hunting would be required of me. So I opened my mind to it guided by some strict rules. Rule number one - the most important rule of all - is that hunting is for food, not for sport. Whatever I kill, I must eat.
But as I sat with a .22 rifle in my lap, learning to hunt for the first time, the thought of food belonged to a different planet. Scanning the ground listening for the rustle of a tail or scurrying feet along bark, my senses heightening to a fever pitch. I teetered on the brink of a reality where the line between sanity and lunacy blurred into obscurity.
Am I really going to kill a squirrel? A SQUIRREL? The thoughts were louder than my jagged breath. Squirrel meat won't fill a freezer locker that lasts the winter season like larger game, but meat is meat and one must start somewhere. It felt less daunting. Less inhumane. But my mind-tricks were transparent and I knew it wasn’t.
When the rifle popped in my right ear like the first crackle of the Fourth of July, my dream of being a homesteader turned dark. Dark like Goldilocks going rogue on the three bears instead of living in harmony with them.
And when the hair of that silvery bushy tail stood straight as a plank before going limp, my heart exploded like a pebble under the weight of the moon.
When I found him, I dropped to my knees, scooping his still-warm body between my two hands. His body pulled tighter and tighter into rigidity. The sides of his fuzzy cheeks and his tail hung over either side of my quivering hands.
The afternoon sun lit the forest too brightly. I was the devil hiding under an angelic glow of a tightly laced canopy of leaves. The heel-clicking goats and the long-haired cattle faded like ghosts - suddenly a mirage of the mind of some crazy girl who thought she was cut out for this life. I walked gingerly out of the forest holding the fragility of life between two hands. The soft, warm tones of my romance turned into the sinister reds of a horror. I could hear my ancestors laughing at me so emphatically that their popcorn bounced off heaven's walls.
I brought the squirrel home and suffered through cleaning the meat with my jaw wired irrevocably tight. I thought dissecting a frog in high school biology was bad, but this, this was some sick form of torture - a relentless assault on my sanity. I left the scraps for the scavengers and vacuum-sealed the meat I managed to salvage.
I placed the meat in the freezer. Months passed but I thought about that squirrel often. At stoplights, between meetings, under the falling water of a steaming shower. At terribly inappropriate times and times that made no sense at all. I saw Sandy Cheeks and Scrat from Iceage through every window. Even the sight of nuts in the supermarket was too triggering. My brain was determined to remind me of him. My sadness grew to disastrous proportions. My relationship with this frozen squirrel was catastrophically comedic. I knew I had to eat the meat. Otherwise, there was no point. No point at all. It was important for me to do this. To see this rite of passage through. To learn what it takes to be a homesteader. But I was afraid to cook it. Afraid I would turn it to rubber or scorch it black. Afraid I would waste that life instead of honoring it.
—
The other evening, my partner, Auston, was telling our dinner guests about his weekend. About how he grabbed a pack of venison out of our freezer to take back home to cook for his family. About how when the meat thawed, he was surprised to see a squirrel lying in the sink. About the dinner and how delicious it was. I imagined lips smacking furiously with the fervor of a Thanksgiving sized appetite.
My boyfriend ate my squirrel, I thought, as my eyes filled with big globby watery tears.
Maybe it’s time to find a new dream.
My warmest thanks to
who helped me work through bringing this story to life and to who always supports me through my first and ugliest drafts.Leave me a comment below if you have experienced something similar - if you dreamed of a lifestyle that turned out to be less idyllic than it was cracked up to be or if you have been humbled by your fondest aspirations.
See you here next week!
RIP Squirrel.
I guess we are looking forward to the saga: My boyfriend ate my venison.
Great job friend (as always)
...now is your opportunity to flip your squirrel karma and domesticate one next time...then you can convince your squirrel pet to bring you more flesh as needed...as for a lifestyle that turned out to be less idyllic than it was cracked up to be...i had to abandon being a hippy when after 45 days without showers my allergies finally let up and i smelt myself...strangers did not deserve what i had done to myself...