Laid back wouldn't quite describe him fully (We all pooled our money and bought him a Lazy-Boy recliner for Christmas one year). Picture Backwoods / Grateful Dead / Storyteller with a winning smile and a wandering soul... Anyway, I remember one story in particular wherein he told us about an experience he had as a trapper back in his home state. He told us all about how, as a teenager, he had a trap-line that ran along a creek near his house. Each season it would normally get him several racoons, muskrats and even an occasional beaver. One week he was nearing the end of his set when he came upon his last leg trap, attached to a VERY mad bobcat. Since his route was somewhat circular, he was fairly close to home and ran back to get a bigger gun. As he went, he began thinking that he really didn't want to kill the bobcat, but he wasn't sure how he was going to get it out of the trap.
That is when a flash of inspiration hit him... he would use an old hard sided suitcase as protection and just ease up towards the bobcat until it couldn't move away any further, and sort of clam-shell the thing most of the way closed while he removed the trap. Before he lost his nerve he grabbed the appropriate sized case and headed back into the woods. When he got back, the bobcat was still angry, but was basically just laying there panting and giving him the evil eye. Since it was about to get dark he had to work quickly. He eased up on the terrified animal, and somehow it worked just like he was expecting on the very first attempt (from personal experience these things normally don't). So, after cornering the exhausted animal into the enclosure, he knelt down on the struggling suitcase. Trying to ignore the thumping and growling and screaming coming from inside, he reached out to free the paw. As soon as the trap let go, the furious cats foot was retracted into the case, which immediately snapped all the way shut. Not knowing what else to do he clicked shut the clasps and then rolled over into the dirt next to the American Tourister to ponder the next step. Although the brilliance that originally gave light to the idea had somehow seemed to work, it was not complete in it's projection of the completed process. Now as he sat next to an eerily quiet suitcase full of potentiality, he realized that fear was precluding his ability to "finish the drill". So he did the only logical thing, and took the suitcase home with him and called several friends over to help.
Later that evening in his gravel driveway, sitting on a semi-circle of tailgates gathered around a large, growling, suitcase, several very drunk teenagers still had not figured out how to get the suitcase open without losing a limb. Finally one of them came up with a great idea. There was a place near town where a tunnel went though a mountain and a vertical wall rose from the roadbed. If the suitcase were dropped in just the right way, it would pop open and the bobcat could run away unharmed. Just to make sure, they would drop it and then run back away from the edge so that the angry cat didn't get any ideas about tracking them down for revenge.
So "They loaded up the truck..." and they put 4 guys in back to keep the suitcase from sliding around. When they got to the backside of this particular hill, they still needed to walk quite a way to drop the cat. More beer was consumed, more laughs were shared, and eventually they emerged above the road. Two guys were elected to take it the final 10 feet or so and push it over the edge. With a whoop and a redneck salute (Budweiser raised in the air) the bobcat was on his way. There was a rustling of grass, leaves and pebbles, a pause while the cat was temporarily flying through the air, and then a loud thump... followed by muffled bobcat screaming, then silence again. Somehow in all of the logistical planning, and the beer, the part where the latches needed to be undone first was overlooked. To make it worse, the suitcase was now lying down there on the side of the road. The two drop zone guys ran in horror back to the group, and they all ran back down the far side to the truck. They tore off around the mountain and back through the tunnel. When they emerged, they were just in time to see a car speeding off from the side of the road, but no suitcase. They all piled out and looked on both sides of the road, down in the ditch, back a ways into the tunnel, and found nothing. To this day all my friend can imagine is that another car came out of the tunnel while they were still making their transit down and around the mountain, saw the suitcase, jumped out, threw it in their trunk and left before anyone could see what they had done... at some point the story had an end that would have been fun to watch. --Tom Morrow
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