Coon Hunting

Sammi’s Weekender #300 (midnight)

Click the graphic for a hookup with Sammi’s blog and more midnight 94-word works.

Fifty pounds of bark

I coon hunted once. The County Judge picked me up about dark. I’da never found ‘em at night. The dogs cost more than their pickup trucks. Coon huntin’ is at night. There’s no shooting—no hunting by humans at all. Dogs ride in truck beds and jump out and take off when they park. There’s usually a fire. We smoke and maybe have a nip. The barking begins. Old Larry says, “It sounds like ol’ Blue got one treed.” The dogs come back without a racoon, and everybody heads home ‘bout midnight. That’s it!

Look both ways to those people who see things differently.
Mind the gaps. But leave the dogs and coons alone.

Sammi’s Weekender #230 (brush)

Click the graphic for Sammi’s Blog and other poems/stories/writings for his prompt.

 

Damn Yankees

Peckerwoods range southern from taproot wormwood sagebrush out west,
to different dialects in deep East Texas’s vast Big Thicket Forest
with snake-filled, gator-infested swamps.

Coon hunters haul coonhounds, like Ol’ Blue,
in pickups circled round night fires.
Dogs tree them coons for the bark and fun of the run.

Where cultural racism thrives as casual and common as an Easter toothache,
in tasteless towns, where hate breeds happiness decayed.

Damn longhaired, white-assed Yankee,
“What cha mean ya never been coon huntin’?
Grab yer wahoo and follow me.”

Look both ways and wonder, why does it have to be this way?
Mind the gaps for gators and snakes.
“Old Blue got one treed, but Scout is a-trackin’ some tail.”