Ugh, Embarrassing And Painful Incident

[Spiderallis]

Oww! I hope you heal quickly and comfortably. Kind of curious though, what does squirrel taste like?

 

[Airedale 48]

Hi all, sorry for not stopping in for a while. First off, Spider, squirrel tastes like chicken ( didn't you know?) everything does. Actually it can be pretty gamie. I like to soak it in milk for a couple of hours. Rinse them, dry em season with some salt, pepper and garlic. After that I like to deep fry them. There's actually a fair amount of meat on a squirrel. Some like to just use the back legs but the shoulders have meat too.
I don't know if being homeless at times, growing up dirt poor, or the military or something else makes me want to try to be as self sufficient as I possibly can. When I moved here I toar ( tore?) out all of my electric and my propane heat and installed a wood stove. Every summer is spent finding good firewood, cutting it to length and splitting it. It's messy and hard work but no one can take it away from me. I did all of the work. It's mine and I can heat my house on my own.
When I was a kid, not unlike many other kids, we often had no food, heat ran out and electricity would be off. Later I was homeless. We always had to rely on others. I am currently on disability. Come hell or high water I will get off of it. In the meantime one thing I can do to express my autonomy is doing my best to gather my own food. Not only that but these days I'm finding more and more the woods are my solice. LOL, I saw a show recently where the host made a kind of acorn porridge. I tried it. Lots of preperation and lots of time for very little return and not much taste. Still though, it was cool to try it and nice to learn something new.
It does worry me a bit about being in the woods too much. I mean I tend to want to stay locked in my house or working in my yard or being in the woods. None of which has anything to do with human contact. I'm pretty sure I wont find my future wife while I'm sitting in my tree stand! I've been making it a point though just to go into town, grab a cup of coffee, sit on a park bench with my dog. If no one talks to me that's okay, at least I'm not in my house. Usually if for no other reason people stop and want to chat about Cowboy. Funny, I don't know about others but it's hard not to be "someone" I mean when I am in public I can be Dan the dog trainer, or Dan the intelligent guy, or Dan the former paratrooper. There are other Dan's but they are all part of me. Somehow I bet there is a kind of core me. Like a Dan that doesn't have to be anyone but just Dan. I bet that would be nice.Does anyone else feel like that? Everything is kind of a role and being in public feels like enemy territory. I suppose that's why I go. I guess the more I go, the more I learn that people are not the enemy. No one is waking up thinking about how they hate Dan or how they are going to hurt me.
Sometimes I wish I'd never been born. All of which is funny since I have almost all of my paperwork ready to turn in to the local college. I think that it's funny that I am going to such a place. I am proud just to be able to navigate the paperwork nevermind finding my way around not loosing my rage/ fear on some poor college kid who has no idea what he's run into or probably what he did to draw my wrath. Man, it's going to be tough. I believe though that t will be a great time of growth. I'll be continuing my quest to health. Hopefully I'll find a career that will work for me and make a good enough living to get off of disability. Even better, the more time I'm around people I hope the more comfortable and tolerant I'll learn to be. Maybe I'll find a woman to spend time with.
Funny, both very real fear but then again there's hope.

 

[Airedale 48]

Nurse Nurse, I think you'll get a particular kick out of this.... as they roled me into the ER I was writhing in pain. I loked at the nurse ( are you ready Nurse Nurse?) Nurse? I say, Nurse, I know you deal with lots of people coming in to try to get pain killers. I'm not doing that, I promise, can you please get me something? I think she nearly fell out laughing. Her answer was something like" wow, I've never met anyone so determined to get pain killers. LOL, of course a couple of minutes later she got me some morphine.

 

[Airedale 48]

Britt, hunting is just being part of the circle of life everyone is part of the circle. Hunters though tend to want to maintain what some us feel is our place in the circle. It's not just the hunt. It's being part of the woods. When you are part of the woods a person can walk within feet of you and have no idea you are there. Too, I do think that there is a predatory part of man. The hunt fills a part of my heritage. For thousands of years that is how we lived. I believe that we don't change in a few generations. Nor would I want to. A deer has his family, they live the life that is natural ( getting a bit philosophic, I suppose the U.S. Declaration of Independance even applies to animals... life, liberty and the persuit of happiness) Anyway, the deer lives the life it's supposed to live. He's free to do what he wants, eat and breed. At some point, like the rest of nature, including us, he dies. He can die of injury, disease or predation. In this case predation is the hunter. I prefer to be part of that rather than going to a supermarket to buy a cut of meat that did not lead a free life, who probably was shot up with who knows what and was never an individual. Yeah, I know the individual part sounds kind of crazy. For me deer hunting is like that.
Duck and goose hunting is different. I can best describe my joy by describing the process. There's an old saying. It says you don't need to be crazy to be a duck hunter... but it helps.
Anyway, duck hunting is a wintertime season. It starts off with a wake up time of 4 AM or so. Followed by several pairs of long underwear and neopreme waders. It's at this point that you'll realize that it's now just about impossible to walk and also that now you have to go to the bathroom. Hopefully you realized early as it's another few minutes to shed everything. Okay, finally, coffee is made. I'm all bundled up. Supposed to be 20 degrees and heavy gusts. My buddy shows up and we load our decoys, guns, gear and anything else that might keep us from freezing to death. Next is the trip down some dark and isolated country road to a boat launch. Next it's time to load the boat. Make sure our guns are sqaured away ( not that they weren't cleaned several times before) and hopefully, if all goes well,the boat starts on the first few pulls. Next is a freezing ride to our hunting location.
Finally we get to our blind site. Next it can take anywhere from half an hour on up to two hours setting up your decoys. Finally, just before first light everything is done. We crawl into our duck blind. Pour some hot coffee, make sure Cowboy the dog is squared away and begin to relax. Before long the sun will be coming up and I can pretty much garuntee that there are few things as beautiful as the sun rising over the water shining down on the decoys. Just beautiful. Ducks and geese are generally most active from a little before sun up until mid to late morning. The rest of the morning is spent trying to lure birds in with duck and goose calls (it's not easy speaking duck or goose, though it's truly amazing to watch a really good caller being in a giant flock of geese). If we aren't calling or intently waiting we're just being guys, joking around, lying about the fish we caught, talking polotics or whatever. If we're really lucky we might actually bring a few meals home.
Finally maybe the best part comes when the ducks are cleaned and ready for cooking. The boat and gear are put up. I've had a hot shower and lastly soaking up the heat from the hot stove ,this of course is followed by a nice warm winter nap huddled by the stove. It just doesn't get better than that. At least not for me.

 

[Airedale 48]

Albatross, the provider thing is huge. Funny, one of my fantasies is a wife who get's and enjoys my providing for us both.... lol, I suppose some might feel like the cat owner who just opened her door to find a dead mouse that her cat left as a gift!

 

[nursenurse]

@Airedale 48 , I am an awful insomniac, and now you have me laughing so hard that I really cannot go back to sleep!

One of my BFFs' fathers was a hunter. We girls used to take turns cooking each other's birthday dinners for the gang, and we were the recipient of mystery meat dinners more than once. She wouldn't tell us what we ate until dinner was over.

Not sure I could eat squirrel. When it still has the shape of something cute and fuzzy I check out. I went to Peru a few years ago, and of course one of the big delicacies is guinea pig. Head, claws and whiskers still intact, both in the grocery store, and in the stew. I would have tried it, but could not get around the fact that Fluffy was still looking at me, lol, wuss that I am. They told me they left everything on so that you knew you were not eating cat. I stuck to pisco sours.

 

[nursenurse]

P.S. How are your ribs?

 

[Airedale 48]

Fortunately they're pretty much better. I still feel a stitch every now and again, but where don't I feel a stitch these days?

 

[nursenurse]

Quit falling out of trees ;)

To address your original post, we all have different roles that we play in life, PTSD or not. They add to the core person of who we are, but life demands at times that we switch hats. That core person remains the same, generally, the core values, whatever they may be. I can see in you for one, a great sense of humour :D

When my Ma was in palliative care, she went into hospital and lived for six months. She actually enjoyed being the patient, well, not the dying part. I had intended to take her home and let her die in her house, but she was a very demanding person at times, and all I wanted to be instead of the care giver, which is my life's work, was the daughter, to be able to comfort her without continuing on with the role of chief cook and bottle washer and butt wiper. Unfortunately I had to be more diligent than ever because of the sloppy nursing I was witness to, but that is another story.

The point being that yes, there are so many different roles we have to portray, but what we all want mostly out of life is for someone to see the person under all those layers, Dan the paratrooper, Dan the Dog Trainer, but really, Dan the man with a heart and soul. It is a privilege to know you, if only in the cyber world. Never be afraid to let that heart and soul shine through.

 

[Britt.f7]

Thanks for the perspective. I still can't see doing it myself, but I prefer the unknown. Makes it easier for me. I could handle some of the beautiful pictures you've painted. (without getting cold). Dan the man that does it all. Surely one day you will find a woman who appreciates that. Good luck in college! I think that is awesome. You have purpose. That is what life is for. I'm still searching for mine.

 

[Changing4Best]

My husband was a hunter, we had a lot of venison one year. It is good meat. I had it one other time, in a restaurant in Argentina on our honeymoon. He had some other game meat. It was a special restaurant for that. I visited a lady in the old folks' hospital once and she said she grew up on squirrel meat. She said it was good and she misses it, as they don't serve it where she lives now. She lived in the mountains here and ate it all her life. She said you boil it in water with the skin on, and then peal the skin and fur off after that. She grew up with her mother and that was what they ate as well as wild vegetables. A lot of the mountain folk eat that way here.

Hope you feel better!