2024, animals, Farming Update, home, Nature, Seasons

The Rabbits

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The weekend Farm Report comes to us from Ben.

The weather is warming, the chickens are back out in the grassy areas, I can work in the shop comfortably again, and I turned off the well house heater and unplugged the tractor block heater. Whew. It felt like January in Minnesota. For a week. And now it’s not dark yet at 5:00 PM, and we just need some sunshine. I don’t want to get too anxious or excited about all this, we still got February and March to get through, but there is hope on the horizon.  

When it’s so cold the chickens don’t come to eat the corn we put out down by the barn, there are deer, pheasants, and rabbits that still come around to clean it up. Plus, a variety of birds. I really hate the deer eating that corn, I feed them enough out in the fields, they don’t need to eat this corn, too. At least we haven’t had so many wild turkeys around the last few years.  

I’ve never been very good at identifying animal footprints. Yet again, an example of missing our Steve. We could use his help on this. It’s not hard to know the deer tracks, but Steve would know male from female tracks, and how old they were. He’d know what a pheasant track looked like, and probably know the difference between the tracks of a crow, robin, and mourning dove, as well as how many, what they had for breakfast, and where they were headed next. I can identify rabbit tracks, they’re not hard. No details mind you, just, you know, ‘wabbit twacks’*. And of course, if there’s rabbits, there’s rabbit pellets.  

When I was a kid, I had several different sling shots. Homemade ones that never lasted, simple wooden ones, and I think I had a couple different versions of the ‘Wrist Rocket’ sling shot. Those little rabbit pellets made good ammunition. They were all over the backyard. And they were perfect little balls for shooting! I didn’t know they were rabbit poop. Until my big brother told me. (Older siblings, they spoil everything.) When I see all those pellets down by the barn, I remember that. I googled ‘wrist rocket’ to see if they were still around. They are! My gosh, slingshot technology has advanced! Names like the “Laserhawk”, the “Daisy B52”, the “P51” (The B52 and P51 are well known airplanes). They have molded finger grips and can have multiple ‘launching’ bands! And magnets to hold steel pellets in the pouch! And mounted flashlights!! You can buy targets, or you can buy clay-based shot called “Clod Poppers”.  

The most expensive slingshot I could find was $99.99, the “Scout LT PRO”. According to their advertising, it comes with “additional thumb screws because they look awesome”. Well, there ya go. It looks awesome.  

There are Slingshot tournaments.   There’s a Slingshot Association International. 

Say it like Elmer Fudd

EVER HAD A SLING SHOT?  WHAT TOURNAMENT DO WE NEED?  

48 thoughts on “The Rabbits”

  2. Rise and Shine, Baboons,

    I remember being fascinated with slingshots as a youngster, especially following a Sunday School lesson about David and Goliath. I had a children’s book of bedtime Bible stories that included this story which I read over and over. Then I tried to make a slingshot out of my mom’s sewing materials–elastic and fabric. I think I also bought one at the B&B Dime store. Accuracy with either slingshot was negligible.

    Tournament: I am watching #45’s tournament with himself to determine which legal case, either civil or criminal trials, he can lose even worse than he already has lost. Next week the judgement on the business case brought by Letitia James is due in which he could lose the right to do business in NY. That should feed my sense of schadenfreude.

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    1. You’re brave. I can’t stand watching anything about him. He makes my skin crawl. Nails on a chalkboard. My blood pressure soars. I share your schadenfreude but I can’t stand his voice.

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  3. I remember slingshots, not the wrist rocket variety but homemade ones with a “Y” cut from a tree branch and the elastic portion cut from an old innertube. The leather pouch usually came from the tongue of an old shoe. I don’t remember what I might of shot at but when you have a projectile-flinging instrument everything looks like a target.

    I don’t see the need for any new tournaments for me to ignore but I would love to revisit the horse pulling contest I witnessed somewhere near Northfield back in the ‘70s. Teams of magnificent work horses competed in pulling weighted sledges. I had no stake in which team prevailed, but the opportunity to witness those beautiful animals at work was unforgettable.

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  4. Once we are moved back to MN, we might want to get Kryill involved in barn hunts. No vermin are hurt, but the dogs get to search for them in clever hideouts.

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  5. S-s-s-silly B-b-Ben! T-t-t-tryin’ to s-s-say it wike Elmer F-f-fudd! (Autocorrect is mad at me right now.)

    N-n-no siwwy s-s-slingshots for me! I’m more akin to that s-s-s-siwwy wabbit!

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  7. Except for looping a rubber band over my fingers to shoot a folded piece of paper across the room when I was in school, I have few memories of actively using a slingshot of any variety.

    Now tournaments… a friend volunteered last year at a national cheesemaker’s event. I may have to get my act together and volunteer with her this year (any cheese that has been judged either gets brought home by volunteers or tossed at the end of the event… I got some of her leftovers and was not at all sad about it). Mmm… cheeeeeeeese.

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  8. Grew up in woods in age of inner tubes with many tires on farm to provide ruined tubes: of course we made our own sling shots. Lots of them.
    Tournaments: how about fewer of them. For instance, why has food become a competition and a race?

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    1. i grew up in the burbs of bloomington when the houses were sprouting up like weeds
      fights with sailing shingles and dirt clods were our main activities
      hiding out in the not finished homes shooting out the windows at the kids in the backyard was a full weekends agenda
      slingshots were y shaped tree branches and tire bands
      mike herbolts dad had inner tubes and shop stuff like vices and saws and linoleum knives
      my brother got in trouble for shooting out mark bruggemeyers tooth
      mark was trying to shoot him when he got shot but his parents were not about to absolve him
      we had woods and swamps and playgrounds and each provided its own opportunities for dreaming up variations on tom sawyer themes
      there were 4 kids in every house and you didn’t need to go to the end of the block for buddies. you kind of got the kids within 4 or 5 houses
      then our gang against theirs was the neighborhood watch
      competition
      nobody does anything any more
      they watch or play video games
      competition is for elite freaks to show how much they have invested in their chosen field
      athletes are dumb as a rock
      geeks are lost in IT or a specialty tangent that leaves mortals out
      artistic endeavors leave most on their own
      i don’t like judged events
      you do something and you know if you did it well or left room for improvement
      people get crushed before they graduate grade school in most areas of life
      and the smug jerks who win only find out later it’s not a ticket to easy street going forward it’s a false sense of achievement
      my grandson looks for encouragement on all his conquests but he tries everything and tries to do his best always
      if he was put in competition where he was paired with similarly skilled people so one wins and twenty lose he would feel a failure
      i think it’s possible to have winners with variations on a skill nuance
      best art
      best song
      best poem
      all open for discussion
      bias kills truth
      truth is relative
      how do decree the winning star in the sky
      people are tougher

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  9. ari is 5
    denver 3
    luca 1

    i was talking about ari

    he gets in trouble for not listening in kindergarten
    because they are studying “g” and he is studying the capitals of all the nations in the world
    he memorized all their flags because the usa states and capitals was so fast to learn
    he also thought learning the elemental tables and studying black holes
    he’s an interesting kid
    shows his piano teacher the songs he wrote this week and she shows him how to choose a theme when he is writing, he’s a kick

    denver is sharp as a tack but doesn’t speak yet
    they had him tested for autism but he fails every autism test except the vocalazation. he does most other test items at levels way above 3,year old

    luca is 1 and appears to be a “normal “ kid who is fighting for a place in the world with 2 such extreme brothers

    i’m papa and i just get to watch and love them

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        1. My son was part of the Eden Prairie program, and it was so helpful in keeping him engaged in learning. He was so bored in the classroom, did everyone else’s homework (but not his own—grrrr), and played on his graphing calculator constantly when he was bored. I am sure he would have dropped out of school without that program.

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        1. Speech pathologists often don’t want to diagnose it in littles, but I have seen several cases this past year where the IQ is more than intact but the brain and the oral muscles don’t want to communicate on how to make sounds.

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        2. My Idaho grandson is all over the map. Off the charts for his age in reading but never reads unless forced to. Off the charts in math. All sorts of neurodivergence. But can barely write or do art. Only now in fourth grade are they willing to admit he has a major problem with muscle development and control. Idaho eschews gifted only does spec. Ed. In extreme circumstances.
          Clyde

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        3. she said that she has already checked and he doesn’t fit the criteria
          she’s in the medical claims biz so she has been to a bunch of folks and is told he just is doing it differently
          he’ll get there

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  10. Dearest reading Baboons, especially Sherrilee,

    I think most of you received VS’s email with her top ten reads of 2023. I am working my way through this year’s masterpiece. Number 2, “The English Experience” is the book I found on Libby in audio form. The author reads it. I may have to be hospitalized by the end of the day from the effects of laughing too hard. Not only that but the author, Julie Schumacher is a prof at the U of MN, married to the political pundit Larry Jacobs. Who knew?

    This book goes to the top of the list of the funniest book ever. The twins, characters in the book, Andromeda and Casseiopeia are undifferentiated, appearing jointly, and cause me to need to sit down to laugh with every appearance in the story.

    Thank you VS.

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    1. Did you read the first two books of her trilogy? “Dear Committee Members” and “The Shakespeare Requirement”. I still need to read “The English Experiment”.

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        1. This is the first year I have felt like I have the luxury of time to explore everything on your reading list. I will go back and pick up the first two books in the trilogy, but if they are as funny as this one the laughing is going to hurt! And then there is the Passive-Aggressive relationship between the protagonist and his ex-wife…

          The t-shirt slogan “Payne University: Where education hurts” has had me giggling all day. What droll humor. The author reads the audio book. At first I thought her voice was wrong for it, but after the funny stuff started, I thought her voice fit the content really well.

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  12. When I was in high school, my grandfather build a slingshot box in the backyard. Think a big refrigerator box with a window cut into it — only fancier. There was a big target inside that swung if you hit it. The idea was that you could shoot marbles all day long and they would collect in the box so you didn’t lose them or spend hours looking for them in the yard.

    My dad didn’t seem to be all that good at it but was boasting anyway. Eventually he bet the younger kids that he could hit the target three times in a row. I’d been suckered into this kind of thing before and I knew my dad was probably much better than he was letting on. I tried to warn them but they didn’t listen. He took a nickel off all four of them.

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  13. I looked up “Wrist Rocket” an one of the interesting factsIcame across was that in Germany,if your slongshot has that wrist attachment you have to get a legal permit for it.

    Not sure about tournaments. The voting is open for the annual snowplow naming contest, though.

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  14. OT – Film recommendation: White Nights. This is an old film (from 1968 I think), but one I had somehow missed. Well worth seeing, especially if you’re a fan of dance. It stars Gregory Hines and Michael Baryshnikov. The plot is a bit contrived and hokey, but the dance scenes are beautiful. It’s available on Youtube and Netflix. Here’s a link to Roger Ebert’s review of it: https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/white-nights-1985

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