Ralph the Stripper Coon
By Gale Sparks
When I was around fifteen my dad, brother and I were into the coon hunting habit. Coon hides were bringing a premium price, the fur market fluctuates similar to the stock market.
During this time we had a pet coon by the name of Ralph. He’d been our family pet for a couple of years, being a pet ate well and was a pretty healthy coon weighing in at over thirty pounds easily.
One of Ralph’s chores around the house was to climb a tree in our yard so our young dogs could get experience I treeing a live coon. Normally, what we would do is let Ralph climb a tree in the yard with a long lead rope snapped to his collar. Then we lead our old coon dog over to the tree and let her start tree barking, then lead in the young dog to show it how it was done. This helped us determine if the young dog had natural ability or not
One of our cousins gave us a young dog he had bought from a farmer over in Whitely County. After taking the young coon hound out a few times, he became discouraged. I looked over her pedigree and realized she had an excellent bloodlines. We knew that all she probably needed would be time in the woods with an old dog and some mileage under her feet.
My cousin brought her over the following Friday evening. She was going to be our first hound with a pedigree. I couldn’t wait to see how she reacted to seeing old Ralph in a tree. I knew I was going to have to wait until late the following afternoon.
Dad worked a night shift and seldom get to bed before 2:00 A.M. Normally, he never got up until noon.
Late the next afternoon when the day finally started to cool down, we went to the back yard to begin our little test. As we stepped off the patio, I looked over at over at our neighbors house. I noticed that they had set several tables out in their backyard. I looked over my shoulder at my dad.
He was smiling, and then, said. “Don’t worry it’ll be alright. They probably won’t start their thing ’til after we’re done.”
As luck would have it our only neighbors within a half a mile were right next door. They were a prudish couple, very active in their Baptist church with the youth group and choir. They were both raised in the city, then for God only knows what reason, decided to move to the country. The only time you saw them outdoors was when they were having fellowship with the congregation for one thing or another.
The husband and wife were total opposites. Mr. George was a very quiet man slim in stature. I don’t remember ever hearing more than two dozen words coming out of his mouth in the eighteen years that my parents lived next-door to them. His wife on the other hand was a rotund, fire, and brimstone lady that ran her family with an iron fist. It was her prudish, holier than thou attitude that led to the under lying tension between her and my father. Dad seemed to take a perverse pleasure in pushing Ms. G’s buttons.
As I stepped around the privacy fence that bordered our patio, Ralph came to the gate of his kennel and began chittering. He always enjoyed these little exercises. Whenever he saw us come to his cage with a lead rope he knew it was playtime.
I always thought it was really cool the way he would hold your wrist with his paws as you bent down to hook the lead rope to his collar. He always made his coon chittering noises when being lead out, and I swore it looked like he was grinning under his mask.
I would lead Ralph down the backyard to a little creek that ran through our property. When we got to the upside of the creek bank, there was a small Ash tree that grew next to the fence that bordered our neighbor’s property. Ralph, an old hand at this game quickly climbed the tree.
When the overweight coon was safely up the tree, dad came over with our new dog. I took a broken limb and whacked the tree, this signaled Ralph to start his chitter.
The little female sniffed the tree about the same time as Ralph chittered. An explosion of v\barking came from our newly acquired hound.
Dad and I were grinning at each other and doing some back patting, this young dog was going to be something. As we were congratulating each other on our new prospect, I caught sight of movement from the corner of my right eye. I turned to look and saw that the neighbors, along with their youth group were coming out of the house carrying food and setting up tables.
I looked up at dad and before I could say a thing he said, “Let’s see how long this girl will tree before she tires out.” Her tree bark was almost deafening when you stood next to her. She treed with real enthusiasm, but the down side was we were only thirty feet from the nearest table in the neighbor’s yard. Quickly, I said a silent prayer that we would finish before they were ready to say grace.
She’d been tree barking over fifteen minutes and was starting to get hot. I took her back to her doghouse and hooked her up, then I went to the house and got Ralph a small can of cat food.
Ralph always got a can as a reward for playing with us. It was also the easiest way to get him out of the tree. He’d start climbing down as soon as you stood under the tree, and the aroma of the tuna flavored cat food wafted on the air.
While Ralph sat eating his snack, dad lit a cigarette, and I got a dip of Skoal. We were still discussing our hopes for the new dog, when Ralph finished up. We decided that if Sue could trail as well as she teed, we were going to have a dog worth bragging about.
I took Ralph’s empty can and walked down to the creek filled it with water. As Ralph lapped the water and cooled down. We were still brimming with confidence. I got the coon by his lead rope to walk him back to his kennel. As I started up the creek bank, I silently thanked God we were finished. The backyard party was now in full swing. The entire youth group must have been there. All ages from the ages of fifteen to eighteen, almost two dozen of them.
Then dad decided what the next step in Sue’s test would be. By now the little hound was curled up in the shady spot at the side of her house cooling off, so dad me to lead Ralph by her on the way back to his pen. He wanted to see what she would do when she was eyeball to eyeball with a real live coon.
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