Fun with squirrels
From the Times, If Town Clears Out, It Must Be Squirrel Season:
Squirrel season opened at dawn Saturday, and within minutes the retort of shotguns boomed through this part of Evangeline Parish. Elsewhere, squirrels might be viewed as rats with good public relations.
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While fathers and sons hunt this weekend, wives and daughters shop in Baton Rouge, 70 miles to the east, or in Lafayette, 45 miles to the south. But some women cannot resist the woods, including Alycia McDaniel, the homecoming queen at Pine Prairie High. “Excitement rushes through your body when you see a squirrel and you say, ‘I’ve got to shoot it,’ ” she said.
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Today, although squirrel meat is prized for its sweet taste in a brown sauce or in a gumbo, and brains are considered a delicacy by some, this opening weekend is “about the outing, not the killing,” said Stephen Mayeux, senior vice president of Citizens Bank in Ville Platte.
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“If you pick up a live squirrel, you never will again,” Mr. Cary said, exposing the animal’s large and sharp front teeth. “They bite and they hold on. I had a cousin once who got his face all scarred up.”
On Thursday, Mr. Cary gave Jason an early birthday present: a large fox squirrel the boy had killed last year mounted on a piece of driftwood. Jason said he could not think of having gotten a better present.
But unlike those hicks in Louisiana, people in Massachusetts like to fish for squirrels.