Get it? Apparently their sports writer thought it was such a fine pun combining his love for Shakespeare and his outdoorsy appreciation for slaughter (come to think of it maybe just the slaughter part) that he chose it for the headline of this column listing the best prices received at a recent fur auction at the Genesee Valley Trappers Association in the clubhouse at Honeoye.
One beaver hide sold for $50.50, the highest for that species. Chris “Hoot” Gerling of Collins Center is a versatile trapper as well as a buyer. He specializes in making beaver hats.
Fifty bucks? Is that a lot? Just imagine how much it was worth to the beaver. The casual tone of the scalping article and the notion that trapping is a SPORT and should be reported in this section is chilling to me. Just for clarity, trapping would only be a sport if the animals had an equal chance of winning. Hmm. Now that would introduce an exciting element of risk to the story. I might follow that.
I had to go searching for the meaning behind the phrase. As famous as the soothsayer’s ‘beware the ides of march‘ is, the Roman term “ides” is really just referring to a date, probably the 15th, although there isn’t an exact translation. Unlike our dates, which are numbered sequentially from the beginning of the month, the Romans counted backwards from three fixed points: the Nones, the Ides and the Kalends of the following month. Kalends being the first day of the new moon, Ides being full moon and nones being the half moon.
So what would that make today? Well yesterday was the new moon, so that would make it the Kalends of March? I guess now we’re officially in Aprilis territory. Come to think of it, if you’re a beaver or a fur-bearer of any kind, you should probably beware that, too.
