Rabbit Boxes
Do you know what a rabbit box is?
It is a crude rabbit trap. I had a couple as I grew up.
They were easy to construct and I made my own.
The box, with some food at the back part of it, would be
placed where rabbits would probably run. The food caused
the rabbit to go to the back of the box and hit a trigger
which let a slide door fall capturing him.
It was great fun to check on
your boxes. You could tell from a distance if the door
was shut and you’d caught something. I never kept a
rabbit because I didn’t like the thought of killing it
and dressing it to eat. Besides, I couldn’t bear the
thought of eating one. This kind of trap didn’t hurt
the animal and I considered it a humane sport.
My grandmother however didn’t consider trapping rabbits a
sport. She had about 25 boxes. She checked these boxes
every day and would bring the rabbits she had caught home
where she kept them in a cage until the peddler came.
The peddler was a man who traveled from farm to farm
buying, selling, and trading merchandise gathered as he
went along. He paid my grandmother 50¢ per rabbit. She
usually had five or six to sell. Three dollars was a good
extra income at that time. She usually also had eggs and
butter to trade, but rabbits were her best commodity.