On hot summer days when someone asks me what outdoor adventure I found to write about this week, I just glare at them. Joyce and I are both cool-weather fans, and when it’s much over 80 we become vegetables, so this heat drives me inside where I sit at my computer and ponder cooler days and stories from years gone by. One such story I often think about happened on a hot summer morning where I grew up and deserves telling again. It involves a high school class mate of mine, his older brother and a muskrat. So sit back and enjoy Larry and the Muskrat.
John and I graduated together and were just a few years out of high school. He and older brother Larry both had bass boats and were avid largemouth bass fishermen who liked to spend Sunday mornings on a nice local reservoir named Clear Fork. Larry said he enjoyed the quiet time and all the wildlife he saw as much as the fishing. This particular morning he was fishing with a spinner-bait, a large odd-shaped contraption full of hooks and shiny blades that makes the whole rig spin and chatter as it’s retrieved through the water. He was close to shore and had stopped casting to watch a muskrat putter about along the bank. A few feet of line hung from his rod with the spinner bait dangling from the end. After several minutes of being amused by the muskrat, he decided it was time to fish again so he slapped the water with the spinner bait just to scare the muskrat. However, the line carried the lure farther than expected, mistakenly hooking the surprised muskrat, and the fight was on!
John was fishing a ways off but the commotion caught his attention and Larry’s rod bent doubly into the water was the first thing he saw. Between chuckles, Larry quickly explained the situation and asked for his help. John got his boat as close as possible and after what must have been quite a tussle, he managed to dip the struggling muskrat from the water, but razor sharp teeth made quick work of the net and it was in the water again, this time with Larry’s line running through a dip net sporting a huge hole in its bottom. After another lengthy scuffle they once again managed to somehow hoist the combative muskrat into the boat, and then the real rodeo began. Now John and Larry were both avid outdoorsmen and conservationists, and all they wanted to do was unhook poor muskrat Sam without harming him. Like I said before, a spinner-bait is full of sharp treble hooks, and now they had one very ticked-off, soaking wet muskrat in the boat with several sets of those hooks fastened securely to him and he evidently was not obeying their verbal commands very well. Remember, Larry’s line was still running through a ruined dip net that I’m sure was very much in the way. Somehow he got the muskrat pulled back through the net and John was able to pounce on it, pinning the hapless critter to the floor with the rim of the net across its neck. John held it down with his foot while Larry went to work with his pliers attempting to extract the hooks. A fish with a couple hooks in its mouth is one thing, but a feisty, soaking wet rodent the size of a loaf of bread with who-knows-how-many hooks fastened securely to its fur-covered body is quite another matter.
Larry worked feverishly, noticing that the muskrat’s eyeballs were bulging slightly from the weight of John’s foot on the steel ring across its neck. Each embedded hook had to be wobbled and wiggled until the sharp barb on its tip pulled free from the muskrat’s tough hide. Finally success as the last of the hooks came free! But then there remained the problem of how to get one still ticked-off but now absolutely free muskrat out of the boat. With that quandary swirling in their minds, both guys simultaneously stepped backwards to suddenly release the muskrat, (in their minds somehow hoping it would just launch itself over the side) but looked at each other in disbelief as the poor luckless creature lay lifeless on the floor, evidently strangled in the process, despite their best intentions – problem solved!
Although not funny that muskrat Sammy had to give his life for this adventure, this is yet another story I’ll take with me to my grave when I sometimes can’t remember what I had for breakfast. Continue to Explore Kansas Outdoors!
Steve can be contacted by email at [email protected].
