Post Apocalypse Job Search

I am celebrating. In honor of impending Easter, I had both Quail eggs and a bunny rabbit for dinner. The rabbit, I caught in a box trap constructed from wooden boards and a forked stick. Where did I get the box trap, Mr. Ghrit may ask? I MADE IT WITH MY NEW SAW AND HAMMER!!!!
It amazes me how much delight I can find in such a simple, even primitive achievement. Mile stones are now measured in inches and feet. May God Bless.

 

Molly now has nine baby opossums hanging from her tail and she follows me around sometimes like a puppy, especially if I happen to be cooking or preparing food in any manner. She is getting quite large and her crossed eye is not much better and she refuses to climb trees any more, preferring to bump into them. I probably shouldn't have hit her so hard with my stick when i first climbed her tree and she snarled at me. I suppose I addled her and she might now believe she is a dog. I wonder if we fried some fish, would I have to make "Hush Possums"? Thursday is frightened of her and insists she is a giant mutant rat but he thinks the babies are "Cool"

 

Heh pic brought this to mind

Alan Jackson-Playing Possum - YouTube

 

In a manner of speaking, they did in fact come from Thursday but not as a barter. He was watching me try to fit a pair of planks together with my knife and a rock and some rusty bent nails and said" Why don't you just use the saw?" naturally I explained that I did not have a saw and he went inside his shelter and returned with a small bow-saw. I cut all the necessary pieces for my box-tap, a rabbit gum, I believe it was called in the thread about them on Survival Monkey. As I was fitting them together with scavenged nails and a rock, he asked if I needed a hammer? And then fetched one. an hour later, My rabbit gum was complete and Thursday said" Dude, if that catches a rabbit, you can have the saw and hammer" or words that eventually implied to that statement, albeit they amounted to a small wager of sorts.
I let Molly and her "puppies?" spend a few hours inside my trap to rid it of human scent although I am reasonably sure my scent isn't quite as human as it was say, two months ago. I then baited it with fresh ripe dew berries, slightly fermented due to heat, that are ripening all around. I caught my first rabbit in less than an hour! I also now have a small salted rabbit skin that will eventually join my bear blanket.

 

ROFLMAO, Frank, maybe you should open a Post Apocalypse Casino; so you are a betting man?

 

Brain tan the hide, it may come in handy later. After all, never too early to start preparing for winter!!!

 

here's a method of making rabbit gums:
How to Build a Rabbit Live-Trap I | MDC

 

yes, there was a very good thread on them in our forum, too.
here is mine.

 

I caught a raccoon in my rabbit trap last night. It has damaged the trap and I will need to repair it but I m thinking about a slow-roast bbq? The entrails are going into the turtle trap and crawfish trap. Drying and smoking seem to be the best methods so far of preserving my abundance, but I am starting to produce way more food than I am consuming and while I believe that this is necessary to improve my minimal skill set, am very concerned about depleting resources that I will need in the coming months.

 

I would concentrate on fish and crustaceans rather than game at this time of year, except for maybe the occasional groundhog. Save the red meat game for when it is colder and easier to preserve. Fish, frogs, turtles, crawfish, mussels, all should be plentiful. Fish can be dried, smoked, and salted for storage. The wild asparagus you mentioned can be canned, if you have some decent jars? Ghrit suggested you might build a kiln and fire some clay into pots? A reasonable seal might be made from pine resin to allow canning of fruits, berries, and vegetables. Fish and meats can be preserved by canning as well, while it would be easier with proper jars and lids, it is not beyond the scope of possibilities that home-made fired clay pots can be manufactured and used for canning. Think Amphora. I do not know the criteria for clay that be utilized but I am sure there are people here on the board that would have that information? Now we can possibly learn the value of communications and information resourcing?

 

Digging your own clay is an interesting prospect. Please let us know if you try it. Here is a link to an interesting article I found on the subject.

http://pottery.about.com/od/diyclaybodies/tp/digclay.htm

 

This morning, sitting on a rock at the edge of the stream, enjoying my morning ablution, the thought came to me that I am now quite at peace with my new life.

In my previous existance, I believed that I was fully prepared to survive whatever circumstances in which I might find myself. I never dreamed that the supplies and implements I had carefully amassed would be lost as they were when the Escalade was "impounded" by the ruffians I encountered. Those supplies represented safety to me and when they were gone, I am ashamed to admit that I was overcome with terror as I realized that "things" could not fill the gaps in my knowledge. I'm sure many of you found me quite amusing, the city lawyer, sleeping in a guano filled bat cave and trying to survive by his wits. Even I am amused when I think back a few short months.

But, with the help of my new friends and my wits (yes, I have discovered that I actually possess them,) I have been able to fashion quite a pleasant existence for myself. My appetites are fed, well, most of them anyway, and as a side benefit, I have managed to trim a few pounds off my old, rotund, self. I may even be fit enough to find an opportunity to use that Bear Gall Bladder I have tucked away for a special occassion.

One of my new Survival Monkey friends sent me a PM teasing me that my old idol, Bear Gryllis, is probably more of a TV star than a survivalist. I was a little embarrassed to learn this but I have still used some of the things I saw him do. I sleep easily either in the shelter of my primitive abode or under the stars, I bathe in the stream mornings and swim in the evenings. I recognize many plants so the abundant flora has supplanted both the local grocer and apothocary. Through experimentation, I have learned just the right quantity of the delicious watercress I can consume without too deleterious an effect. The lesson learned with my first meal remains with me to this day. I have become proficient in turtle, rabbit and racoon trapping, frog catching, fishing, and a variety of other means of securing food. I still tremble when I remember the bear incident but that, too, was a valuable lesson. Food is now stored high in the trees and I sleep with one ear listening for even the snap of a twig. Necessity heightens our awareness and senses.

My old friends and fellow legalists would be astonished were they to see me now. They would shake their heads at my scruffy, un-lawyerlike appearance (I haven't yet master shaving with a bare blade) and wonder why this modern day Robinson Crusoe has a vague resemblence to one Mr. Frank Lee Ticious, their old advasary before the bar and their drinking companion in front of another.

All of the things I have learned give me a measure of emjoyment. I am far more capable, outside of the courtroom, than I though myself to be and my confidence in myself grows every day.

I believe I am a man at peace and quite enjoying the solitary, austere existance which has become my life. I find myself humming to the Allman Brothers singing in my head, "Good Time Feeling."

 

I hope your fine speech was not a valediction, Frank.

I for one am pleased that you have been able to successsfully make the transition from the hugger mugger of pre PAW life to a life of self sufficiency and self satisfaction. In losing yourself you have found yourself, and there are few folk in this world who aren't lost, trying to find a sense of self identity, vainly searching in some hopeless quest for an identity that shall never be theirs.

May good luck travel with you Frank, and may the wind always be to your back, propelling you forward to your fame and fortune!

 

It is pretty funny to see how you first only thought of survival in terms of trading your labors for what you need and have managed the full circle to using your labors to provide what you need. I have watched the 9 to 5 transmogrify into a baser belief in making or taking what you need and am impressed that you are starting to think in terms of conservation; civilization should prevail even in a post Apocalypse world.

 

Thank you for the kind words my friends. I have indeed learned that the skills I innately possessed or have recently learned, can be plied into barter, the cash of the new world. I thank you both for your good wishes but if I have learned one thing thus far it is that there is much yet to learn. I will, without doubt, be calling on the skills of my Survival Monkey cohorts to assist me as I move ahead. Adventures await Frank L. Ticious!

 

Probably dog poop.