PICKERS PICK MORE THAN BERRIES

  Over the years my friends and I have picked tons of berries.  We didn’t always pick strawberries.  We’ve picked red raspberries, black raspberries, and even golden raspberries.  We’ve picked blue berries, huckleberries, currants, and even gooseberries.  We have had many adventures while picking this “fruit of the gods.”

  My cousin was surprised by a rattler once while picking blue berries.  Maybe the snake was more surprised than he was.  He was in shock.  The snake was so scared he hastily slithered away.

  Once, while picking black raspberries in the woods we were surprised by a cat.  We took Duke, our boxer, with us.  We had been picking for hours.  We never stopped till our buckets, as well as our stomachs were full.  It was addictive.

  We headed for the road, taking a route through a swampy area.  I heard a cough behind me.  I ignored this, thinking it was Duke.  We cleared the stand of cattails and approached the edge of the road.  Cattails in the fall are drying and letting loose fluffy stuff that resembles silken doll hair or the angel hair on the Christmas tree.  It gets in your nose and your eyes and makes you sneeze.  I just assumed all the noise came from Duke.

  Climbing on to the road last, I heard another cough behind me.  It sounded as though it was about a yard away in the reeds.  It couldn’t have been my sisters.  They were all in front of me climbing the hill to our place.  I said, “Come on Duke.  You’ll be late for supper!”  What came out of the bushes wasn’t Duke.  It was a huge cat, such as I had never seen before.  He wasn’t as big as Duke, but he was no house cat either.  Duke was growling and the cat tore across the road and disappeared into the pasture.  We have never before or since gone up that hill faster!

  We told Ma all about it when we got inside and calmed down enough to make sense.  That night the farmers got together for what they thought was a coon hunt.  What they caught was a Canadian Lynx!  It had been terrorizing the dairy cows around the neighborhood, but no one knew what it was till they caught it.