A squirrel hunt Thanksgiving

Dad kept promising to take me hunting but rarely had time.

He was a field supervisor for a commercial heating and air conditioning contractor over in Decatur and if that did not keep him busy enough he was moon lighting, doing his own jobs, building the foundation for what eventually would become his own company.

My cousin, Sonny, his real name was George, worked at Lockheed in Marietta. He was going to school at night, studying accounting and business administration, so he did not have much time to take me hunting either.

Sonny, his wife, Joanne, and their baby daughter, Teresa, came over for Thanksgiving dinner the year I turned 13, growing up in northwest Atlanta off Bankhead Highway.

It was a good day, clear and cool, a blue sky autumn day. The woods had that late fall scent that made you know there was a squirrel on every hardwood limb.

"You got anything planned this afternoon?," Sonny asked Dad after lunch.

Dad looked up from his recliner.

"Nothing except sleeping off this meal," he said, and yawned.

"Thought if you want to, we'd go over to the Chattahoochee," Sonny suggested. "Squirrels have been raising Cane on a hardwood ridge I know
of on the Cobb County side of the river."

I was following this conversation very intently.

Dad stretched as the recliner swung forward.

"Guess we need to get over there before we lose daylight," he said.

We got to a parking spot near the river bridge about 3:00 that afternoon and followed a trail that led to the ridge. The woods were dead still, not a breath of wind. You could hear anything that moved and the leaves were dry and crackled under your boots.

"All right, boy," Dad said. "We're going to leave you here on this end of the ridge. "Look before you shoot, make sure it ain't me or Sonny crackling them leaves."

Dad and my cousin moved off to pick their spot.

After a while the sound of their walking died away and the stillness enveloped me.

The Chattahoochee squirrels were not interested in being a target. I saw no movement in the limbs, heard no crackling on the leaf carpeted woodland floor.

It was getting on toward dusk and as the afternoon shadows grew longer I figured this would be another walk in the woods with a shotgun and nothing to show for it.

Then I saw him.

Squirrels can be amazingly quiet when they want to be and they can escape your attention easily. This fellow had been shot at before, I thought, as I looked up and spotted him wadded up in a little gray ball,
trying to evade me.

He was about 30 feet up in a hickory, a perfect shot for my used J.C. Higgins 16 gauge bolt action Dad had given me.

I pointed, finger on the trigger.

The shot never fired.

The squirrel slipped down the limb, eased around the other side of the tree and disappeared.

"Well, boy, looks like you were fixin' to shoot at something. How come you didn't fire?", Dad asked as he walked toward me.

The sun was low now, its rays filtering through the tree limbs.

"Aw Dad, I don't know, I said. "It's Thanksgiving, maybe that old squirrel has family, too. Didn't seem right to shoot him today."

Dad grinned.

"Squirrels don't celebrate Thanksgiving, son."

I looked down at Dad's game bag.

It was empty, no gray furry tails sticking out.

"I didn't hear you shoot either, Daddy."

Dad looked down at the game bag about the same time.

"Aw, I didn't see anything," he said. "Well, I did see one about 40 feet away on a stump, would have been a good shot, but I was losing daylight and he was too small to kill anyway."

I smiled.

"You sure he wasn't celebrating Thanksgiving?"

We both laughed.

"Come on boy, let's go find Sonny and get off this ridge before dark."

Sonny was waiting for us back at the car. He told us he was all set to shoot a big one not 20 feet away, heard him crackling around in the leaves, but his gun jammed and he could not fire, or so he said.

He had a brand new Browning Automatic 12 gauge.

When we got back home, we ate cold turkey sandwiches for supper; the boiled squirrel and rice would have to wait.

As it turned out, the squirrels could give thanks, too, the Thanksgiving when I was 13.