When I was a kid I had a certain liking to books. I wouldn’t say I was a bookworm, but I liked to read; especially if the book was good. One of my favorite books is Where the Red Fern Grows by Wilson Rawls. I think maybe I related to Billy (the boy in the story) in some regards, as we were both very independent little fellers.
There was a lot about the story that still sticks with me today even though I haven’t read the book in many, many years. I remember the reference to salt steak or salt pork. Either way, it combined two things I love to eat: salt and meat. Ish, that sounds gross now that I read it. Ok, moving on then.
The other part of the book that stood out to me then, and still does today, is the type of raccoon trap Billy used to catch his first raccoon. It is probably one of the most basic traps but is incredibly effective. Picture this: out in the woods there is a tree down or an old stump and to make this trap all you need to do is drill a hole into the wood that is maybe an inch or so in diameter and a few inches deep. From around the top of the hole you just drilled you hammer in some nails so they protrude into the hole at a downward slope and vaguely make a funnel shape. There ya go. You’re ready to catch a really ticked off, wild animal now.
If you’ve never heard of this kind of trap before, you must be asking how in the world it could ever work. It’s simple. After creating the trap, you bait it with something shiny. Raccoons love shiny things and will grab them and keep them in their favorite places. So at the bottom of the hole of nails you leave your favorite, sparkly nickel or some shiny tin. Anything that is shiny will work.
When the curious masked bandit comes along and sees the irresistible shiny object, it’s going to think to itself, “Mr. Raccoon, you’ve had a long, hard day. You should reward yourself with that handsome nickel.” So, Mr. Raccoon will reach his little paw into the hole, grab onto the nickel and try to pull his paw back out. But with his closed fist of treasure and the nails poking him, he can’t seem to get his treasure and run away with it.
The mystery, and the reason why these traps work isn’t so much because the nails drive into the paw and capture the raccoon – which they might, but the real mystery is that it is the closed fist of treasure that won’t fit back out of the hole. Here is a quote from the book:
“After the coon was killed, I walked over. Papa was trying to get the coon’s paw from the trap. He couldn’t do it. Taking a pair of pliers from his pocket, he said, ‘It’s a good thing I had these along or we would have had to cut his foot off.’ After Papa had pulled the nails, he lifted the coon’s paw from the hole. There, clamped firmly in it, was the bright piece of tin. In a low voice Papa said, ‘Well, I’ll be darned. All he had to do was open it up and he was free, but he wouldn’t do it.’”
There was another kind of book I loved to read in the 1980s. Do remember the choose your own adventure books? In these books you would read along for awhile and then all of a sudden you were prompted to either continuing reading or turn to page something or another to take the story down a different path. The choice was up to you. In a way, you got to choose your own ending to the story.
As I write this tonight, I see that each of these books is a great illustration for life and I will leave you with this thought and this challenge: As you live your life out today, take a moment to think. Is there something “shiny” in your own hand that has caught you in a trap; something that is preventing you from being free? Remember that all that raccoon had to do was let go of his treasure and he could be free to scamper off into the woods, but instead he hung on to it and let himself get clubbed to death. What are you holding onto that is so important that it is worth losing your life to? You are free to make your own choices and free to choose your own ending. If you just stop and think, and become aware of what things in this life are trapping you, maybe you can realize that simply letting go of that thing will give you some freedom – and some life!
So, what ending will you choose?
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