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AS TOLD TO ALISA KRAUSE (School Project)

[Alisa Scored 20/20 3/5 Very Interesting]

[Note by Eric Krause - This a story Mom recounted to Kathy, Billy and me many times. I have added some explanatory notes in square brackets]

• So you want to hear an interesting story, do you? It's hard to know where to start. How I tell you about this one muskrat I met? You see, it was my job [at our first Point Pelee home] to skin the muskrats after your Grandpa [Heinrich Wilhelm Krause, March 15, 1921- January 15, 1980] trapped them. So, one afternoon I went up to the attic where they were hanging. Just as I grabbed this certain muskrat's hind legs, it bit me. He was supposed to be dead. There was no way I was going to skin muskrats again.

Muskrats aren't all that bad though. De Laurier [Ed DeLaurier of Point Pelee] invited us over one time to eat them. He soaked it in vinegar, or was it home-made wine, overnight. That seemed to take the wild taste out of them. Ah! By the way, you do know who De  Laurier is don't you? He's the man the Park has made a big fuss over, just because he was one of the first farmers at the Point [By the way too, I picked asparagus and beans on his farm]. They rebuilt his house for a tourist attraction, although I know they didn't do it right. He used to have a tree going through the middle of his porch!

Now to tell you more about the trapping. We used to have this huge man [Leon "Tink" White] come over to our place once and a while. He must have been two-hundred pounds or so. One of his past times was to catch skunks out of trees. I know it sounds pretty gross, right? Well, he said that if their hind legs were kept shut and the tails kept down, there would be no smell. If there was, I sure would not have let him come over.

Actually, skunks aren't all that bad. There used to be one who ate lunch on my back porch with all twenty-four cats of mine. Definitely, that was not an anti-social skunk, or the cats!

The deer were pretty friendly too. They were great friends with our dog Pepper [my best friend at the new house in the Point] or Blacky, or, no I'm not sure which dog it was .  I know it was Pepper who often had an orphaned raccoon sleep between his ears. I felt so sorry for that little bandit, I had to take it in.

Just thinking about all the animals that were in my backyard, its no wonder your Dad [William (Billy) Alexander Krause: May 6, 1945-May 25, 1995] got jealous sometimes. If he wanted my attention he had twenty four cats, plus, to compete with!

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