The Jack Rabbit

We Ramseys inherited or bought about 720 acres from our parents a few years back. Jane and I own 80 acres left to us by Mother, and we receive rent income from it.

A distant set of rich farmer cousins rent from us. They demanded that I tear out the two, single-row, half-mile shelter belts.

I said no way. I love trees, and nature and I love growing things, and planted 50 replacement trees in those shelter belts 8 months ago.

Now when Dad and Gram planted those trees in the 60s or thereabouts, they alternated American elm trees with caragana bushes, every other tree.

Dutch elm swept through 35 years ago, and has been killing the elms ever since. There are not many elms left, and they are falling into the crops of the renters, and it is the landlord's obligation to clean them up.

Doug and a mentally handicapped, strapping giant were cleaning up some of those trees for us a couple of weeks ago, so I sent a check to help out the disabled gent, so kind to our family.

Doug was back at it two days ago when he called me on my mobile phone. He was tickled that he scared up a pure white jack rabbit out of the north shelter belt on the 80 and it ran out into Uncle Hillyard quarter (all black and bare). it was looking for a place to hide and it had no cover at all so it ran a few hundred feet west and back into my shelter belt. for cover against Doug, the potential predator.

I told Doug that he made my day with that account.

When we were kids, seeing jackrabbits at night in the winter was commonplace, even routine. Now they are rare. The farmers in the Red River Valley have eliminated all trees, shelterbelts and habitat.

Now I love farmers and admire them, and I am a capitalist first and foremost, but to leave the solid powdery black and friable to the wind can carry it away, and to leave not one whit of trees and habitat for the creatures is radical anti-environmentalism.

The EPA and the DNR running amok is the other extreme, but at least we were able to provide some shelter for a jackrabbit. As long as I am alive, and we own that land, the shelter belts stay, even if we make less rent.