Our End Of The Lake: Surviving After The 2012 Solar Storm (Prepper Trilogy) (42 page)

“Sounds like a pretty dangerous proposition to get too far out seeing that there most likely is nobody around these days to help you if you get in trouble out on the water. I wonder how many people had to swim in or paddle in when that Solar storm hit” Jack said walking back towards my house with me.

“I don’t know, I suppose a lot of boats would still work because of simple engines and a lot of them wouldn’t, it would depend on the type of electronics in them. That’s very difficult to consider what might work or not. What would be weird think about also is if you were out sailing you wouldn’t have noticed a thing until you returned to shore and noticed the power was out.” I responded and contemplated the matter with him.

“Jack I am thinking about taking some kitchen cupboards out of one of these houses and outfitting that boat so that I don’t have my barter goods all over the place. What do you think?” I said while looking at my watch and noticing it would be dusk pretty soon.

“That should be pretty easy to rig. We can probably even make them easily removable, if you want.” He said following my lead out to the area we were using for a community kitchen.

“Hi. What’s for supper?” Jack chimed as we approached a tripod that suspended a big iron Dutch oven over the glowing coals of a fire.

“We are celebrating your new boat, its Chinese takeout night. We are having Mountain House Sweet and Sour Pork and Teriyaki Chicken with steamed rice.” Sherry said grinning knowing these were two of my favorites, even without the kung fu movies we used to enjoy watching while we ate in the past.

“Yum that sounds good.” I said and grabbed me a glass of orange drink.

This was an easy meal for everyone, boil some water add the freeze dried food and we were ready. You had to be careful with this type of food though; it was pretty low in calories, so we always had biscuits or bread and also one of the drink mixes that was high in vitamins to go with it.

“Hey, I got surprise for everyone; follow me.” I said.

“We’re not quite done eating.” Lois said anticipating there might be some leftovers she could have for doing the dishes. Who ever wanted to do dishes or was assigned that day to do them, didn’t have to cook and got an extra ration, if they wanted one. Lois seemed to love kitchen cleanup duty more that most.

“This won’t take long; bring your bowl with you.” I said and wandered down to our dock that wasn’t far from Bernie’s.

“Check it out.” I said pointing towards the green light that appeared in the water.

“Wow, that looks bizarre, but it’s pretty.” Sherry said looking at it from different angles.

“We will try some night fishing later on; that light should improve our odds a bit I am thinking.” I said to the delighted women and we headed back to the fire to socialize a bit.

“I figure we can leave that light on about 4 hours and still have plenty of power in the batteries for indoor things or what ever. That light is a wattage hog, so we got to be careful until Jack and I rig up something more suitable and I can find me some more batteries.” I said and about a half hour later we tried our luck fishing. The light I think helped some probably be better later when it drew some more bugs and fish, but I didn’t hang around that long. I was tired and morning would come soon enough for me,

Thanksgiving at the Boat Ramp

Jack and I took a short borrowing trip in the morning to look through some houses we had previously visited and decide how hard it would be to use the kitchen cupboards to outfit the boat when we needed to.

Going into vacant houses is creepy, you keep expecting someone to jump out of a room and challenge you. It really keeps you edge and it could cause a serious accident if you were not dedicated to knowing where everyone was at every minute. It was best just to stay right next to each other, because any unexpected sound would make you jump a mile and you had to be very conscious about not putting your finger anywhere near a trigger.

We got done with our little window shopping excursion for possible supplies and headed over to Donnie’s to pick him up and go check our trap.

The area we had chosen for to build the little cabin was off a short intersecting road that branched from the main road and we had placed our trap about 75 yards into the woods. As we got closer to the site, I could hear the sweet sound of success dead ahead. Gobble! Gobble!

“We got something by the sounds of it! Jack said and picked up the pace.

“Careful about getting...” I had started to say ‘too close’, when Donnie who started to lean down to peer into the trap at just the time all the turkeys inside freaked and tried to fly up out the top of the roof with quite a ruckus and nearly scared he and Jack to death. To which after watching them both about running over each other backing up, I started laughing as the two of them regained composure upon seeing the trap had held together in spite of the birds onslaught.

“Once they get used to us standing here and talking for a minute, they will calm down.” I advised them.

“When we go to look at them keep in mind they can kick and peck but that’s only if you’re being very foolish or careless and get too close. A turkey will try to fight you or chase you though outside that pen. The Turkeys who get accustomed to suburban life have been known to apparently start to see people as other turkeys, often displaying aggressive social behavior in attempts to establish their "turkey dominance." There used to be some funny videos on YouTube of people getting chased by turkeys.” I said listening to our captured birds settling down a bit and I eased over for a look.

“We did good. I am counting 6 or 7. Looks like the party is on! “I said thumping Donnie on the back and watching Jack bob up and down at a respectful distance to look through the spaces between the poles at our captured feast.

“I figure 6, but it’s sort of hard to see with them moving around in there.” Jack said grinning at our success.

“So what do we do now?” Donnie asked skeptically eying the birds.

“We go call a meeting with Frank and find out if everyone on his side of the inlet wants to have a little shindig or not” I said dropping a pole down in the entrance to our Turkey cabin.

“What’s that for? I thought you said they wouldn’t get out.” Jack asked me.

“They won’t, but I don’t want any others to get in, this is plenty and I want to find out if anyone on the other side of the lake knows how to clean one so I can get some help. I hate plucking and preparing the damn things and if I can get out of that task I will somehow.” I advised my trapping partners and they agreed that sounded like a good idea especially if it didn’t involve me having to teach them.

We loaded back up and went back to the compound and I told Sherry about our success and asked if she was ready to go visit Frank and Nancy.

She was very happy to get out of helping the others with the laundry and had been looking forward to our return trip anyway and so Sherry and I took the motor boat over for a visit to our neighbors.

Frank and Nancy either saw or heard us coming and were wandering down to their dock.

“Nice boat David, I saw you wrestling it down off the boat lift yesterday. That belonged to Mr. Mullins who no one’s seen much around here in years. He is an older guy that lives in Atlanta, so I doubt you will be hearing him complain about your using it.” Frank said with a twinkle in his eye.

“I am sure thankful that Mr. Mullins kept it in such fine shape. It feels strange to just up and take things, but it would be just dumb not to put things to use, that people might not ever get a chance to see again.” I said and wandered up to the Deck with him.

Sherry and Nancy were already up there and having an animated talk so I guessed that Sherry had told her about my proposed party.

“Frank, Sherry says her group wants to have a Thanksgiving party with us. Doesn’t that sound like a great idea?” Nancy said beaming at her husband.

Sherry and I talked to them about an hour and we tentatively picked tomorrow for it if all the lake residents agreed to it. I told Frank how I wanted to cook the turkeys but said we only had found 3 metal trash cans and did he know where any were at. He said the boat ramp around the bend had some and a little park with tables so it would be the perfect meet up place to hold our little get together.

Frank sent his two kids off on their bicycles to ask the other residents around him if they wanted to attend and we waited for the kids to give us RSVP back from them.

“Frank, do you or anyone that might be coming to our party know how to clean a turkey?” I tentatively broached the subject.

“Well I can, I used to turkey hunt and I am pretty sure Lamar knows how. He deer and hog hunts so it’s entirely possible. How did you get so many? I haven’t heard you all doing a bunch of shooting so you must have been back on the lake a ways cheating and hunting from the boat” he said interested as any avid hunter would be.

“He trapped them” Sherry chimed in happily before catching herself and looking perplexed that she had let my little secret out and wasn’t supposed to.

“Yea, I trapped them, but it’s my little secret how I did it for now” I said not wishing to have any competition in that arena.

“This little Thanksgiving celebration is on us, but in the future I might want to barter with you on this side of the lake if your hunting skills don’t match my trapping skills, you might want to trade me some cans of food or something for the opportunity to have one of my birds when I have a surplus.” I told him.

“You find a farm or something with turkeys on it?” He asked me directly and studied me while I gave my answer.

“No these are wild; you will see them with their feathers on to confirm that when I bring them over tomorrow morning so you and Lamar was it can help to clean them. I got six of them. So anybody else that’s up to task would be welcome too. I will be head cook and I caught them so I think I shouldn’t have to do any of the plucking and cleaning. Does that sound fair?” I said and sipped some hot Kool-Aid that actually didn’t taste too bad.

“OK, I think that sounds reasonable to me. It’s not a job I much like either but seeing how much trouble you are already going too sounds like a fair deal to me. The procedure is simple but takes a bit of time. The easiest way is to skin the whole bird after gutting it. However, this is not the best way to treat a bird for cooking. For the best flavor, you need to leave the skin on. The steps for cleaning the bird and leaving the skin on is as follows:

1. Remove the head.

2. Make an incision about 4 inches long in the bird’s underside just in front of his tail.

3. Pull out the guts but reserve the crop (gizzard), the heart and the liver. The rest goes into the gut pile.

4. Heat a bucket of water to boiling. Hold the bird by its feet and plunge it into the boiling water for a few seconds. This loosens the feathers and enables you to remove them.

5. Pull off the feathers. This is the hard part and may require re-dipping the bird to loosen all the feathers.

6. Once you have the feathers off, you will still have a few small feathers left on the bird. These can be singed off by holding the bird over the burner of a gas stove, camp fire or whatever; keeping the bird moving over the flame, you only want to singe off the tiny feathers, not cook the bird.

7. Thoroughly wash the bird inside and out with fresh cold water.

8. Remove the feet and either cook the bird or freeze it for later use.

“I just soon skin them. If I was going to fry one I would leave the skin on, but baking them like I am going to do, I don’t think it makes a huge difference. They will have been dead less than an hour time I bring them over, so you can do it however you like” I said to Frank and looked out to see if the kids were returning yet or not.

“You must have netted trade secret, I won’t try to get it out of you just yet but Lucas will. He looks like Rambo when he goes hunting and even puts those birds on the roost or something. I know on camouflage paint under his camouflage veil. He is going to worry you to death trying to find out a new hunting trick be legal or illegal. Hell it’s the illegal things that work best don’t they David?’ Frank said with a smile.

“Yeah you might say that.” I allowed, but was not giving up my little turkey fort trick.

“You need to ride across the Lake and meet a man named Boudreaux, now that guy can catch most anything. He even goes out for alligators around here.” Nancy said to Sherry.

“Alligators? This lake has gators? She said in surprise.

“She meant Alligator as in Gar fish, but I wouldn’t put it past a gator to be way back in one of these sloughs somewhere in the swampy area of the lake. None around here though.” Frank said to a relived Sherry.

After about 20 minutes the Kids came wheeling back and said everyone was up for what they referred to as a picnic and for us to expect an additional nine people.

“You sure it’s 9 Josh? He asked his eldest.

“Yes Sir, the Stokes family has a guest” he said

“I wonder who that might be.” Nancy said looking at Frank.

“Don’t know guess we find out tomorrow, wonder if who ever it is can clean turkeys” Frank said and then laughed.

“You need a ride over to the Boat ramp or is it pretty close?” I asked Frank