Settin’ Figger-Fours (To F.S.Y. and W.N.H. Haddam Neck, Conn.)

Do you remember the days of settin’ figger-fours?

When we’d scamper down the parstures arter doin’ up the chores?

We organized a company one day in Rabbit Dell

With all of us as managers and laborers as well.

Tho’ the barn was our headquarters we didn’t care a rap,

The top of our ambition was to set another trap.

We had steel-traps, snares, and dead-falls and twitch-ups by the score,

But the kind on which we figgered was the deadly figger-four.

Sometimes the air was laden with a fragrance deep for words,

An’ we sometimes hesitated over takin’ home the “birds”;

But our style uv occypation wouldn’t stan’ such scenes as that,

An’ soon we had the hides off an’ was tyin’ out the fat.

The drummin’ uv the partridge or the pipin’ uv the quail

Wus like sweetest music to us as it floated through the vale.

O’ we lingered by the river, waiting for the wily duck,

But to bag one uv the critters seldom ever was our luck.

But things are different now-a-days, I’m through a-settin’ traps.

Tho’ winds of fortune may shift roun’ an’ drive me home perhaps;

But as it is in these ‘ere times I have to peel my eye

To keep my own head out of traps that in my pathway lie.

For ever sence I come frum home I’ve seen ‘em here an’ there,

All set an’ baited temptin’ly to ketch the unaware;

But I jes’ walk aroun’ an’ tell ‘em by the score:

“Don’t take me for a blasted skunk, for I’ve been there afore.”

Jan. 24, ‘91

Pub. in Conn. Valley Advertiser