Michigan is shaped like a mitten. Huron County is at the tip of the thumb. It is surrounded by Lake Huron to the north and east and the Saginaw Bay on the west. The land is very flat. Before field tiles were affordable, farmers would lie awake at night listening to a downpour and worrying that their crops would drown. By 1940, most farmers who could at all afford it had tiled their fields. Water drained from the fields had to have a way to get to the lakes. Deep, wide "county ditches" were dug to carry the drainage to creeks, rivers and eventually to the Saginaw Bay or Lake Huron. Even in the hottest weather, these ditches contained some water, excellent habitat for muskrats.
During the war, everything was expensive. Muskrat pelts brought more money than in anyone's memory. The muskrat fur wasn't as valuable as mink but mink were rare in Huron County and word spread fast should someone get a mink.
The guy who ran the body shop in Elkton probably ran seven or eight hundred traps. His sons, even his eight-year-old, were pressed into service during the January to mid February season. The traps had to be checked every morning and evening. Very cold weather made for full, lush fur and so made trapping an attractive activity, and generally a successful one. Vegetation was frozen and weathered and fish seldom made it to county ditches. Muskrats had to leave their burrows to search for food.
It was easy to see the routes they took from their burrows on their way out of the ditches to adjoining fields in their search for any left over edible material. It was illegal to place a trap in a runway but no one paid attention. There were too many trappers and too few game wardens so that law was unenforceable.
Freddy had been begging since he was eight for his Dad to let him trap. It was still very cold in the middle of February but the Department of Natural Resources had decided that six weeks was long enough. A longer season would have depleted the muskrat population and eventually made them extinct in Huron County.
Jack would have let Freddy go ahead at eight but Irene thought it was too cold for a boy of eight to get up and go out at dawn with the temperature several degrees below zero and the Lord knows what the wind might be. Anyway he probably wasn't strong enough to set a trap. Jack had taught Freddy to set a trap by pressing the spring down with his foot. One had to be careful to lift the foot slowly to be sure the trip was properly set or fingers could be badly injured or even lost. Jack was sure Freddy could handle it but he let the idea simmer in Irene's brain until by the time Freddy had reached eleven, Irene thought it would be a good experience for the boy. He would learn responsibility and possibly make a little money.
The ditch that ran along the west side of Jack's farm had been spoken for by the body shop man and his father before him as long as Jack could remember. Freddy couldn't trap there. Amos Eicher who had never allowed anyone to trap his ditch had taken a liking to Freddy so Freddy set his twelve traps in Amos' ditch. The boy willingly walked the 3/4 mile north just after sunrise and again just before dusk.
Freddy had a pretty good year for a first try. His traps yielded twelve muskrats. All but two had frozen to death so they were no problem to take out of the trap and put in the burlap bag he carried for that purpose. Two, however had been recently caught and were alive and baring their teeth at Freddy. His dad had made him a club from a broken shovel handle. Jack had drilled a two-inch hole in one end and had poured in molten lead. The heavy lead would help make a blow to the rodent's head lethal. The bared, ugly, brownish teeth did not scare Freddy. The animal couldn't get to him and he knew one blow would kill. But Freddy had never killed anything before. Oh, he had slapped some mosquitoes and swatted some flies but he was having trouble building up the courage to dispatch this living thing.
He debated for several minutes. The thing was worth money to him. He had watched his dad kill animals for butchering and that had not bothered him. Why couldn't he do this?
Actually, it was compassion, not avarice that allowed Freddy to swing the club. Surely the trap had broken the muskrat's leg. It was in pain and probably would be crippled and wouldn't survive even it he were to set it free. At that moment it did not occur to him that he had found several feet in his traps, left by an animal that had chewed off the foot to escape the trap. He thought about that later after he had had no problem killing the second one he'd found alive in his trap. That worried him. He was afraid the more he killed the easier it would be. He could understand the need to kill animals for food and he knew a lot of people killed muskrats but if killing them made it easier to kill, where would it lead? Could he ever kill a steer or a hog? Maybe when he was a man, but not now. Freddy wasn't squeamish. He was just too philosophical, just thought too much, for an eleven-year-old boy.
Jack skinned Freddy's catch for him and pulled the pelts, fur side in, over drying boards left from the few years of his own boyhood trapping. Jack had to quit trapping when he was old enough and his hands were strong enough to strip cows. Milkers didn't quite get all the milk.
Freddy sent his pelts to some place in St. Louis. He made $35.00. Three of the pelts were damaged. He had put the frozen muskrats on a shelf in the barn and something, probably a mouse, had damaged two of the pelts and he had made a small tear in one by trying to take it off the board. His dad got the rest off by just slamming the nose end of the board on the workbench and the pelt then just slid off.
Freddy did some more thinking, then sold his traps to the body shop guy. He didn't want to trap anymore.