Jockey comes clean on horse racing’s dark side

All the men in my family would pile into the station wagon and get ready to hunt. Granted, my dad was the only one who actually hunted, but he had no qualms about bringing me, my brothers, and some of our cousins along for the ride. Not only did he lack qualms, but he made a game out of it. My dad would turn to my uncle with a big grin and say, “Hey Stanley, it’s a good night. Come on, man, let’s go kill some rabbits.”

So that’s exactly what we did.

Ever cautious of the game wardens, my uncle drove along the back roads, careful not to call attention to himself. My dad sat in the passenger’s seat with a gun between his legs, ready to make his move at any moment. As we drove along the rain slicked back roads, we watched for any rabbits that searched for their own dinners. Before we could even spot a rabbit, my dad was already on the move. With the car moving at 15 miles per hour, he would open his door, aim, and shoot. Then someone would throw the rabbit carcass into the back of the car and we would keep on going.

That’s just the way it went. My dad would shoot a rabbit or two and throw them in the back of the beat up station wagon. Then my uncle would rush deeper into the back roads where my dad would shoot a couple more rabbits. Again, we would speed off. By the end of our trip, we could rush away from the back roads with 20 or 30 dead rabbits in the car.

The whole way home our hearts would pound. Not just for the thrill of the kill and not just because of the adrenaline rush we got from doing something wrong, but also because we knew that we would be able to eat the rabbits if we got away with our actions.

When we walked in my house with our hearts still pounding, we would get ready to skin, gut, and prepare the rabbits for dinner. The worst part of this process came when we opened up the rabbits. I’ve smelled a lot of things in my life and none of them are as rancid or foul as the smell of an open rabbit. I don’t know what makes them smell as bad as they do, but when I was a kid, I didn’t really care. All I cared about was that we were going to eat rabbit – and as repulsive as dead rabbits smell when they’re gutted, they smell as delicious as they taste once they’re cooked.

Looking back, I know that our methods of gathering food were wrong and more than a little unconventional. But as a kid, I didn’t know any better. All I knew was that we were hungry and our dad could find us food when we didn’t have another way to get it. That didn’t make him my hero, but it did keep me from living off rice and eggs. Plus, I didn’t actually do anything wrong, so it was easy to distance myself from the situation.

Sadly, the distance disappeared the day my dad made me take matters into my own hands.

One day my dad walked through our living room, past the bedrooms and the kitchen, and into our back yard — if it was big enough to really classify it as a yard. There he built his grandest invention: his very own butcher shop.

It wasn’t really a butcher shop, but it might as well have been. He drove four wooden stakes into the ground and he attached chicken wire securely to the stakes to enclose the four sides. He tied the wire together tightly so nothing could get out from the sides. Once he attached a screened lid to the top of the box, his invention was complete. His contraption was about six feet wide and ten feet long, the perfect size for the ultimate box of trickery. My dad threw a pile of rice chaff into the center of the box and propped up the screened lid with a long stick.

Captivated by the idea of a free meal, a bunch of blackbirds flew into the box to eat the alluring food that was available to them. What those blackbirds didn’t realize is that we had a string attached to that stick, and that string was as good as any butcher’s tool. My older brother Keith and I hid out by the box, waiting for some birds to take our bait. Once the rice chaff lured enough birds into the trap, we pounced. We pulled the string, dropping down the screened lid and trapping the blackbirds inside the box. And once we caught enough blackbirds that way, we got to work.

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