Gary Thill is a second-year grad student in the School's Literary Nonfiction Program. This piece, "Trapping Grandpa," is an excerpt from a larger story Thill wrote for a workshop on writing about the natural world.

by Gary Thill, graduate student

When the trap closed on grandpa, he was still trying to outsmart that mink. Not just any mink, mind you. To hear my grandpa tell it, and he told it a lot, this mink possessed supernatural intelligence and wore a coat of goldspun fur. A mythical creature, she was. The Moby Dick of trappers.

"Pert'near biggest mink tracks I ever seen on that girl," he'd say, his blue eyes afire. "She's a smart one though, that one."

Grandpa never saw that mink but he knew she was there. He knew the way he knew everything about animals. He knew from the tracks she left dancing around but never into the traps he set. He knew from the way the grass matted where she traveled. He knew from the scent she left behind.

But the darndest thing was, somehow that mink knew he knew. Her mink-brown eyes watched him, grandpa swore, from some secret place, her wet black nose crinkling with laughter as he staked down the trap, pulled its cold steel jaws wide. Then once he left, she danced around the trap, just for spite, and with some step grandpa couldn't fathom, snatched the bait without getting caught.

"The shed didn't look like much on the outside -- just a clapboard white shed with a dusty dirt floor and grimy windows. But inside, an animal's nightmare lurked."

He spent long, quiet hours in his trapping shed trying to figure this mink out, trying to figure out which trapping trick could finally trip her up, make her next dance her last. The shed didn't look like much on the outside -- just a clapboard white shed with a dusty dirt floor and grimy windows. But inside, an animal's nightmare lurked. Shiny, well-oiled traps lined the walls. Viles of vile-smelling baits and potions that tricked animals into his traps stocked the shelves. Blood, musk and death hung in the air like the carcasses dangling from chains, their brown, shiny eyes still staring from their sockets. But no amount of coyote piss, camouflage or cunning could catch this mink.

Before long, it became a matter of pride. For grandpa, a man who trapped beaver, mink, muskrat, fox, even skunk successfully and profitably for as long as just about anybody could remember, being outsmarted by a mink was downright embarrassing.

Back then, I felt no sympathy. I thought grandpa a monster. The matching gray Dickies shirt and pants he forever wore became for me the color of death. His hawkish nose hooked out from his face like a predator's waiting for the next kill. His bushy gray eyebrow slanted just enough to suggest a Vincent Price-like evil. His thick, rough fingers still looked strong enough to squeeze the life out of anything. I'd seen him do it.

Secretly, I rooted for the mink and any other creature that might stray into his traps. Sometimes, I thought I saw a flicker of sadness in his blue eyes when he carried back his dead. But then I'd remember those moments in the pre-dawn chill of his trap lines along the muddy James. A muskrat's scream at his black-booted approach. Grandpa's hulking silhouette standing over a first growling, then whimpering fox as he clubbed it to death. The scents of blood and gunpowder on the .22 after he killed a stubborn beaver.

It wasn't until later, when grandpa was gone, that I began to appreciate his struggle with the mink and his skill as a trapper. He could skin animals like they had zippers. He knew by tracks I couldn't even see, signs I couldn't spot, where an animal fed or lived. He could look at scat and tell you what kind of animal left it and how long ago. He knew nature like no other person I've ever known. Yet, he never caught that mink. Instead, nature herself trapped grandpa. A stroke, the doctors said. It bewildered him in a way that mink never did, left him unsure how to pee. And when he died not long after, trapping in our family died with him.