Husbands -- Modern Day Hunters & Foragers . . . In the Freezer!
© 2003 - 2006 Carole Moore
Back in the good old days before food was primarily dispensed from drive-in windows, men – not teenagers saving money to buy cars – were in charge of procuring dinner.
The little woman would remind them they were running low on saber-toothed tiger burgers, so they'd get up with their buddies, sharpen some sticks and ambush a wooly mammoth or two. Then they'd drag it back to the cave, chop it into pieces and the women would conjure up baked mammoth and mammoth stew and chipped mammoth on toast.
In those days it was accepted that men were born hunters. They'd probably still be out punching holes in animals larger than a gas station if not for two things: Wooly mammoths, who were apparently on an intellectual par with golf balls, all jumped into the LaBrea Tarpits; and, women decided they didn't want their husbands hauling home dead animals too big to stuff in the garage.
But even if wooly mammoths were Rhodes scholars and storage of a creature weighing as much as a Humvee wasn't an issue, some say men still wouldn't be dragging the bacon behind them when they come home. These people believe hunting DNA's been replaced by remote control DNA. But they're wrong. The predator DNA's still there – it's just been updated.
Like most men, my husband's basic primal hunter instinct simply lies dormant until something alerts it to the presence of game. Like when I return from the grocery store and hide the chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream behind several packages of frozen broccoli. Suddenly, the man who's been looking at me through half-mast eyelids and grunting when I ask him to fix the dripping faucet in the kitchen begins channeling Neanderthal man.
He rips through the freezer, brutally casting aside entire packages of brussel sprouts and fish sticks without any thought to his own safety. Then, when he finally zeroes in on his prey – in this case the rest of the ice cream – he leaps with a ferocity that's terrible to behold, decimating his quarry without even a tinge of mercy.
I know he does this because he leaves tell-tale clues behind whenever his inner-hunter takes command. Like he tries to cram all of the stuff back into the freezer, but it won't stay and falls against the door, pushing it open just enough to allow everything to defrost. Or he fails to wipe the traces of ice cream off his mustache.
After primitive man returned home dragging gigantic animals carcasses behind him, he staggered into the cave and fell into an exhausted, but well-deserved sleep. My spouse possesses the same instinctive urge, because right after he kills a half gallon of ice cream, he can be found stretched out in his recliner, making lots of masculine hunter snoring sounds.
Yes – hunting in modern times isn't quite the same as bopping large hairy mammals on the noggin, cutting them into bite-sized pieces and rendering them perfect fodder for Cro-Magnon fondue parties, but it's still a challenge, as my spouse will attest. In fact, he's been beside himself, waiting for big game season to start, working hard to prepare for it. He's checked out his equipment and laid in supplies. Judging by early indications, he's going to have a pretty good year.
Heck, who knows? The Panthers might even win a few games for a change.
