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Show woven wire or "chicken" netting. They cut slim juniper posts to hold up the wire. With these they constructed a V of fence with a circular corral as a trap at the point of the V. The long wings of wire funneled the rabbits into the corral. The promoters invited the entire community to reduce the rabbit pests. On a Sunday we'd gather, men, women and children. We'd fan out a mile or more from the trap and attempt to drive the rabbits into the trap. After a "drive" in one neighborhood, the two partners would take down the fence and reconstruct it in another location. We armed ourselves only with clubs because guns were too dangerous, with dozens of children darting about half-concealed by the brush. When a drive was ended, the corral gate would be wired shut. We boys and men would leap the fence and kill the milling, dodging rabbits with our clubs, a gory spectacle the women and girls could not bear to watch. Either we didn't muster enough "beaters" or we over-estimated the number of jacks per square mile. In any event, the largest number we ever caught in one drive was 42 6. At five cents each, that came to $21.30--not much for the two young men who set up a mile of fence for wings and corral. They were paid partly by a feeling of civic service. One time they caught only a couple hundred rabbits but still made the best haul of all. That Sunday we were bewildered to find large numbers of rabbits turning back to escape among us instead of trotting into the corral. Panicky they'd leap high in air between us as we closed the gaps. I seized one around the belly with both |