A very unusual tale about early life in the Alberta badlands. Do you know what happened?
The year was 1878, mother and father had settled some land a few years back, in a region of the western Canadian prairies. The winters were cold and the summers very hot and dry. We had often had to carry buckets of water from the river just to water the crops and give to the animals in the summer. This year we did not have too many animals left.
Winter had been hard, and long, last summer we had experienced weeks where the temperature did not fall below 100 Fahrenheit for days and lots of things died. Our last cow, was killed last summer by a rattlesnake, mother would not even let us eat the meat for fear of poison. Father did kill the snake with an ax, we ate it. But do you know what he did? Somehow father manged to leave the ax lying around after bringing the snake in, and we never found the ax again.
Photo by Author
At that point pretty much the only thing left to eat was each other or the chickens. So we ate most of them. We had to keep a rooster so we would have chicks, and we kept two hens also, because with out a hen, the rooster is not much use. And if one hen died at least we had another. We use to do the same thing with rabbits, mother would say we needed a hare and a spare. But our rabbits got killed the year flies were so bad that they laid eggs on the rabbits bums and the maggots ate the bunnies before we could. It’s called Fly Strike. Mother said if we were hungry we could eat the maggots. Do you know what we did? We ate the bunnies and maggot too! We cooked them in a stew. They tasted like chicken.
It was June of 1878. Mother and father had been trying to get our garden going, we were eating the very last of our rations from last winter. They planted tomatoes, corn, potatoes, and zucchini. Deer had eaten the corn as it came up, we are not really sure what dug up the potatoes, but something got them. Father thought it was the cat, he killed it with the shovel, since we no longer had an ax. Do you know what we did? We ate the cat.
Very compelling story. Sometimes things are so tough, you have to decide what to do if want to live. It reminds me of a movie I watched about a group crashed in snow, they actually did have to live on some who died, to keep alive. It may sound a bit sickening to some, but then think, if it was you there, what would you of done… Great story, keep up the good work 
thought it up this morning as I planted what was left of the plants we bought 2 weeks ago for the garden – it has been a crazy year for us, we still had frost and it got several of our plants. I was thinking how lucky we are to live in a time when we dont have to depend on our garden for survival
I did have a bunny die that way, Fly Strike is very real 
but we didnt eat her. (or the maggots)
* mind factory
Wow. That was disturbing. I think it’s kind of clear how the story ends though. Good job.
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