Meat #1

'Ave a look at what I got 'ere, Sawah.'
I could smell them before I saw them. He walked me across his kitchen to a supermarket-issue cooler bag full of three rabbit carcasses; fleas jumping around inside the bag like mosquitos. Perfect head shots, all three.
 'Zey are dinner tonight, yes?'
What I love about this guy is his poaching intuition. He knows how to cook and he understands a European law of the commons ... but he's in Australia now. He was pulled up and breath tested that night and, when the coppers questioned him about the three dead rabbits lying on the tray of his ute, he gave them such a convoluted French method of cooking rabbit that they got bored and walked away without asking him how he could possibly have killed them without a firearm's license.

So when he asked me if I wanted to go poaching last night I said yes. Of course Jaques. He wanted to get some roo. Of course Jaques. I love the idea of getting my own food. So we drove fifty or sixty kilometres out of town to his regular spot. It was a tree farm gone broke. I know the place because I've been shooting there before. I've always seen the tree farm industry as a dysfunctional pyramid scheme and this theory seems to be coming to fruition. Jaques just sees the broken tree farms as his hunting ground. Good roads, dams full of yabbies and lots of game. He's happy happy.

As soon as we turned off the highway he reefed his rifle from behind my seat. I ducked so the end of the barrel didn't hit my head.
'Always I see a few punters here.'
He laid the .22 across his side window and drove slowly along the gravel road.