My uncle Fuzzy was a crack shot with a .22 calibre single shot. He was share-cropping 360 acres outside of Minco, Oklahoma, and I stayed with him and my Aunt Laura that winter. Back a half mile or so from the cleared land was a heavily wooded area that we used to go hunting in. There were a lot of grey and fox squirrels in the trees there, and cotton-tail rabbits in the brush, and we would usually come back with a half dozen squirrels or a couple of cotton-tails. After they were cleaned Aunt Laura would fry them up and make squirrel gravy or rabbit gravy and hot biscuits and MAN it tasted good. I was about 10, then.
Years later I went hunting on my farm in Kansas with my son one crisp, wintry day. We didn't have much luck, but finally I saw a cotton-tail rabbit sitting in the snow near a stump and shot it. We went back to the house and I skinned the rabbit and cleaned and cut it up. By the time it was ready to cook I had started thinking about all the diseases that rabbit could have. I remembered that it just sat there in the snow, and I started to wonder if it was sick, that maybe that's why it didn't take off on our approach. I remembered this course I took in school where I learned about tularemia, and kept thinking 'maybe that rabbit had tularemia', or some other disease. By the time it was ready to cook the I had lost all appetite for it. I was afraid to eat it.
