March 2, 2014 Jasper
My brother, Karl, worked for Cliff, mostly during the haying season. He also did a little muskrat trapping in early spring. Snow remained on the fields and the river had ice. We never ice skated on the rivers, even though the ice was thick, because you never knew where the whirl pools were. The ice could open any time at the whirl pools and re-close. So if anyone fell through the ice the likely hood of getting out was slim.
Karl ordered a do it yourself canoe kit. He tinkered a lot with building things and repairing old cars. I sometimes would go out on the river with him in that canvas canoe and pull up traps. Once a mallard duck caught its foot in one of those metal jaw traps and drown. Karl and I were both upset. Funny odd thinking of it now that I was upset over an innocent duck dying but not over the muskrats dying.
Anyway, Karl was out in Cliff's fields after a snowfall. He came upon a dead tree that had a nest of baby raccoons. The mother was nowhere to be seen. He came home and told my mother and asked if he should bring them all home. Her appropriate response was to wait a day and let the mother have a chance to return. The next morning early Karl went to check up on the babies. It was very cold. All but one of the baby raccoons attempted to crawl out of the nest looking for their mother and died. Karl wrapped the remaining baby raccoon in a towel and brought him home.
He was tiny and needed to be fed by a toy baby bottle. He grew to be quite large. My father had a knack for names. So the little raccoon was named Jasper. Jasper was a family pet. Since it was illegal to pen wild life up, he had free roam of the house and outdoors. He sat on my father's shoulders and would gently massage his head. We were taught never to play too rough with Jasper. My father would remind us that he was still a wild animal and dangerous.
Jasper loved to take car rides. Open the car door, in he would hop. Naumberg had no schools. It was too small of a town to support a public school. We rode a school bus into Beaver Falls and back home again. The bus stopped in front of our house by the driveway. Jasper everyday waited by the roadside for me and all my six brothers and sisters to come home. We loved him and he loved us.
People had approached my parents if they could take Jasper, but no way was that going to happen. And then it happened. We came home from school. Jasper was not waiting for us. We searched all over for him. We waited for him to come home. We spoke to everyone and anyone if they saw his whereabouts. Sadly we never found him. My own suspicion was that one of those people who wanted him open their car door and in he hopped for a car ride, never to return. In my heart I prayed over and over again that whoever had him treated him with love and respect they way we did.