Trapper

So I did the next best thing I thought, which was to chop a hole in the ice with a short handled ax, then stick a long stick down into the muddy bottom and hung a trap down a ways with a piece of apple on the trigger. I did this with three huts. The fourth trap I put on a log in an open creek that did not freeze, because the water was feeding into the swamp at a pretty good rate from somewhere thru Walker's wooded farm. I walked across to the center of the log, stuck a stick into the creek bottom, slipped the ring on the trap's chain over the stick and laid the trap on the log with again a piece of apple.

Every morning throughout the winter, my mother woke me at five-thirty. I was out the door by six no matter what the weather. If it were a snowstorm or the wind was blowing at thirty miles an hour in the sub zero frigid air. The ground was always covered with snow sometime very deep and in four-foot drifts. Often the temperature was below zero. I would leave with parka, snow pants, black rubber boots, mittens, hat, an ax to chop holes and an apple in my pocket, usually just as it was cracking dawn. My dog Freckles, a brown and white Springer Spaniel always accompanied me, treading gingerly on the frozen snow when first out the door, like one might walk on a hot griddle. We made our way off the island on a snow covered channel into the frozen swamp.

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