My husband is a hunter. I was a hunter, myself, until life and medical issues forced me out of the woods. These days, I wait impatiently, for my husband to bring me an animal. I tan the hides and use them for various things. One year, I found that my hobby was a crime deterrent.
Right before Hurricane Isabel hit the coast in 2003, my husband got a deer. Yay!, I thought, I'll tan this up and make some new moccasins. It had been a while since I had the opportunity to tan a hide, so my stretching frames were in a storage room when he brought home this beautiful doe. We were living in a rather rough trailer park at the time, and so I tacked up the hide on the back of the steps leading to the front door. Several of the young thuggery were bringing their friends to watch me scrape this bloody hide. I ignored them, but I smiled inside as I watched them try to hold their bile.
I scraped the hide, flinging the gore off my knife and wiping it with a rag every so often. I rubbed it with salt and Borax to take all the membrane off, and bringing more gore with it. I cut off the fly-blown tail, and tossed it toward the street. I stretched it tighter and hung it to dry for a few days before I had to rub the rendered-down brains into it to soften it and ready it for use.
Every day, I watched cars brake hard at the sight of this hide. Every day, I watched young people who were misspending their youth walk by and bring their friends to see this hide . Eventually, I finished with it, making myself a nice pair of soft, buttery moccasins.
The next week, Hurricane Isabel hit the coast, and thousands were without electricity or clean water for days. We all lived outside until the power came back on, because it was so hot inside. I cooked on a stove we made from a metal coffee can, and we ate warm food and hot coffee. I didn't have a grill, and fuel for a Coleman stove was near impossible to get. It was a rough time for everyone in our neck of the woods. Then came the night I learned that my hobby was a crime deterrent.
The children had been put down for the night, and my husband and I were sitting on the steps, smoking and talking quietly. We heard a group of young males coming up the street, laughing amongst themselves. Eventually, they stopped in the darkness in front of our home. We could hear them arguing among themselves about whether or not to try breaking in to our home. The darkness had been a good cover for them that week, and we were the last house left on the street at the time.
Suddenly, one young man, apparently somewhat brighter than his companions, piped up,” Hell, no! I ain't going in there! Them people will blow you up, and then start making stuff out your ass. Didn't you see her with that nasty-ass deerskin? I ain't going in there.” We learned sometime later that every home on our block, all around us, had been broken into, and robbed. We were never bothered. My simple hobby had been the protection we needed from looters after a natural disaster.
