We are visiting in Texas . . . where so many natural gas drills are.
Burr and Post Oak trees.
Bragging rights
a neighbor of my brother: hangs catfish heads in the tree by his mailbox . . .
(he also hangs all the coyotes he kills on his fence).
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I — I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference. ~Robert Frost
7 comments:
sara, where in Texas is your brother
Hmmm, I wonder why he does that? Maybe he hangs the coyotes up on the fence to deter live coyotes from hanging out on his property? But, the catfish heads have me baffled!
When we lived on 40 acres of heavily wooded land, our dogs were constantly hunting wildlife and killing things (woodchucks, raccoons, squirrels, moles...). They would drag the carcasses into our YARD. We would throw the carcasses back out into the woods. They would drag them back up to the porch. We would throw them way, way out into the woods. By nightfall the stinking, rotting carcass would be in our front yard again. Finally, my husband started throwing the carcasses high up into the trees. They would catch on a limb and rot there, out of reach of the dogs and out of smelling distance from our house.
That seemed like a good solution at first, but, after a few years, there were all these skeletons dangling from the trees on our property. We walked through the woods frequently or rode the horses through the woods (had lots and lots of trails cut back there). However, whenever other people were with us, they would begin noticing an inordinate number of miscellaneous skeletons hanging from the trees and get a little weirded out by it! (We were so used to seeing them there that we no longer noticed them...it wouldn't be until our friends started acting strangely that we would think to explain the presence of all the little skulls and skeletons in the trees!)
Oh, I forgot to mention the final irony...our address was 23905 HANGING TREE Lane! (The road had been named that decades before we lived there...some history of lynching that went on in a big tree on that road. Not the kind of thing that should be memorialized. ...but, a bit ironic considering the practice we soon feel into.)
Oh...and where in the United States do they name shady lanes something awful like "Hanging Tree"?....Peculiar, Missouri, of course!
KnockonWood - We are right in your neck of the woods!! We are visiting my brothers and other relatives in the DFW area. This brother is in Grandview, TX. He doesn't have access to highspeed internet connection in this area - the connection is PAINFULLY slow out here. So wild that we had better internet connections when traveling in China that we do visiting out here in the sticks (in this part of TX).
Monica - The neighbor that hangs this stuff competes with another neighbor over who can kill more coyotes. . . and they compete on who can get the largest catfish (my brother and SIL call it a 'pissing contest'). This is TX cowboy country out here - all kinds of hunters and stuff like that.... What's so bad is the decaying carcasses really smell, especially when it's hot and the wind blows the smell into all the neighboring acreage.
That is a wild story about 'Hanging Tree Lane'!
First big trip with your daughter?
The dead catfish & coyotes thing is a little macabre.
citizen - Well the first long road trip. She was wonderful.
Yes, the dead animal thing was just creepy to me.
Post a Comment