Foxes and Furs

A Story by Tachyon

A short nonfiction story I wrote in early 2016 about a weekend spent in a fur trapping camp unwillingly. TW some graphic violence

Foxes and fur

My family has quite the affinity for fur. Fur coats, fur boots, furs for rugs, furs on the walls. At least that’s how they imagine themselves, the woodsmen family living off the land, a monument of self-sufficient ruggedness in a smooth soft world. But their ideal is far from their reality; my mother drives a Mercedes, works in an office, and has a cabinet full of mid-tier white wine. My father drives a dump truck; he spends his free time on Facebook sharing conservative posts, complaining about anything progressive, and searching Fox News to add to his already profligate repertoire of complaints. My parents are far from their fantasy lives, though they take pride in attempting to shape their children into the Paul Bunyon Stand-ins they longed to be. They’d get us to run chicken farms, have us trek through the woods, and of course, hunting.

But being the lucky scoundrel I am, I got a special and unique experience:

Fur trapping camp

“Kim is taking Mason and Maguire to a hunting camp in a month or so,” my mother said browsing through her mail, seemingly lost in the splendour of coupon books and free cruises she had won. “Oh really, that sounds like fun,” I reply absentmindedly, hands scrubbing the dried marinara sauce from the floral print bowl that had held my premade pasta dinner the previous night. “Yeah they’re pretty excited, Mason was wondering if you’d like to come along.” I placed the now pristine bowl onto the drying mat. I could hear intent behind her words, she’d only accept a single answer.

“You know I don’t like hanging out with Mason or Maguire,” I said treading lightly, knowing I was in a minefield without a map. “They’re family Gage, and it’s been ages since you’ve seen them, and I never understood why Mason bothers you so much, you used to be into the same things.” she said, referring to my distaste for his over-zealous obsession with all things “redneck”, how his favorite pastimes are chasing goats around a field and wrestling his grandmother’s donkey. Essentially the child my parents dreamed of. I replied: “I don’t think I was the one into it.”

My aversion for the trip sprung solely from the abhorrence I held for my cousins; I hadn’t given a single thought as to what “hunting camp” would entail, though I wasn’t really one for hunting. I wasn’t opposed to it morally, though it definitely wasn’t how I wanted to spend a week of my life.

“Why don’t you ever want to do anything with your family, do you not like us?”

There it was, her ace in the hole, her trump card, the Hail Mary she always kept in her back pocket. I should have seen it coming, trying to change my mother’s mind was like trying to disarm an ICBM with a butter knife. She had already decided that I was going to this camp. I was caught in her snare from the start and every argument only tightened it.

I sigh

“Fine, I guess I could go,” I say, my words a cocktail of resignation and resentment. “It’s good to be close with your family, family should be the most important thing in your life, I shouldn’t have to force you to be around them.” She said, her condescension as thick as my cousins’ skulls.

I pack my bags the night before I leave; t-shirts and jeans halfheartedly stuffed in my backpack, phone in my pocket alongside its charger, my lifeline to reality in the confederate twilight zone I was about to be thrust into.

I awake the next morning to the pungent odour of sizzling pork and the shrill squawking of my cousins’ preadolescent voices echoing through the house. I get dressed and heft my bag like a coffin, prepared to board the hearse.

The ride to camp is a blur of country music, bigoted jokes, and strings of profanity conjoined with the names of politicians. Just imagine a Donald Trump campaign party bus heading to the Alabama state fair, it would be essentially the same experience. Every bigoted pun based on the president’s name like a baseball bat to my cherished sense of humour and a hammer to my brain. With every hill, we climb comes another slew of derogatory remarks with a vaguely comedic tone, and another ounce of grey matter leaks from my ears. Mercifully, we arrive at the camp before the blunt force of my family’s humour can cause permanent brain damage.

The camp was more developed than I had expected, though I had been expecting hide tents as quarters and large rocks as seats. There were four cabins and one main building. The cabins were divided into six rooms each, four bunk beds in each room, fitting eight people each. Well, fitting might be too generous, squeezing in would be more accurate. The main building just seemed to be the average state park administration building, with a couple offices to the side and a cafeteria in the center.

So far I had met not a single person I could hold a conversation with, though my cousins were amongst their peers. I could hear them grunting back and forth about their favorite sharp sticks and their preferred method of smashing one rock with another rock. I almost wanted to document this for anthropological study.

I was reaching for my field journal when my observations were interrupted by the bell, signifying the start of the first trapping class.

I was overwhelmed with enthusiasm and excitement.

My cousin’s mother, my aunt, stopped me as I headed to the classroom “You’re not taking that with you, leave it in the room” she told me, in reference to my phone. “No, I think I’ll take it with me,” I say, disregarding her and her authoritarian posturing. I was not surrendering what little freedom I had left to someone who considered Larry the Cable Guy movies Oscar worthy. Her rage was barely contained as she burned a hole into my back with her glare as I walked into the class, though with the amount of sunburn I’ve dealt with, her death stare was easily ignored.

The class was dull, the instructor insipid, the subject matter somewhat disturbing. He droned on for what felt like hours about the laws surrounding fur trapping, the best traps to use, and how to keep the pelt intact when skinning the animal. I felt like I was surrounded by wannabe Hannibal Lecters the way their attention was glued to the instructor, absorbing every syllable of his guidance on separating sinews from flesh, staring at him with less soul in their eyes than the menagerie of taxidermied forest creatures that filled the room.

The instructor’s drone came to an end, and so did the class. “Well that’s enough talking, who wants to go and actually catch something?” said our field guide, standing in the doorway. He then beckoned us outside showing the class a table holding thirty steel traps, instructing us to take one and board a truck.

We grabbed our traps and received a brief explanation on how to avoid amputating our hand when setting it and were sent on our way. The drive was uneventful, we were to head to the field of a farmer who had made his fields available for trapping, which were apparently abundant in foxes. My cousins were radiating frantic excitement at the prospect of getting to kill a fox.

The rolling hills of the field were edged by a thin forest, this is where our instructor decided to demonstrate how to set the traps: dig a small hole, squeeze the levers and set the trap, bury the trap in the hole leaving the pressure plate clear, making sure no rocks were in the joints so it could spring shut with the full crushing force intended. We set our traps in the tree line and my cousins followed his instructions to the letter.

I’m glad I didn’t

The next morning we ride out to check the traps. Everyone is rabid with excitement, while I’m choking on my anxiety, knowing my trap is empty and hoping the rest of them are as well.

I’m not so lucky

The first trap we see holds an exhausted fox, its leg crushed between two unyielding steel jaws. It lies on its side, defeated. Its fur is matted and dirty, its leg is stuck off at an odd angle with the trap pinning it to the ground. Its chest rises and falls in quick succession, maybe from exhaustion, maybe from pain, probably from both. The fox sees us as we approach, it becomes alert again, gaining a second wind and desperately wrenching and tearing its leg hoping against all hope that it will free itself. It knows it won’t.

The crowd of prospective fur trappers surrounds the Pomeranian-sized animal, filling the air with a bloodthirsty excitement that only rose as our instructor went to his truck and returned with a wooden pole. It was six feet long, made of a knotted, tangled wood of a pinkish hue, it looked heavy. It looked like a club.

I began to feel sick.

“Well someone got lucky, first trap of the day, doesn’t happen very often,” the instructor said with a muted chuckle. “now I’ll show ya how you deal with the animals you catch” this sentence came with an air of pride, he loved this part. He pinned the fox between his boots and levelled the stick with its head. He brought the stick back as if he were on a driving range and started explaining in detail how to beat a fox to death, I couldn’t hear him through the blood pounding in my head. He brought the club down on the skull of the terrified creature, a sharp crack, like a stone dropped on a hardwood floor, the fox yelped. He explained that “getting the job done” can take a few swings, and he brings the stick back again. crack, yelp. Again, crack yelp, each time the fox growing quieter, the sharp cracks turning to dull thuds, the instructors grin unchanged, the crowd looking on with excitement and envy, and each swing of that knotted club simultaneously crushing both me and the fox. He kept hammering away, beating every last drop of resistance out of the fox, until a final thud was accompanied by a deafening crack. His cudgel laid in two pieces.

And it was done.

The fox was no longer a fox, but a sack of meat wrapped in an expensive fur coat. I finally saw what these people had been trying to get out of the fox, and it disgusted me.

A month later I received a package.

It was my fur trapping license.

I burned it.