Got Coon?

This yeoman "urban hunter" is managing to take advantage of the City of Detroit's regression to the wild. I'm just hoping that the City eventually decides to allow "urban farming" within the city limits. There are so many empty lots in Detroit, it's not even funny. (Kick up Google Earth some time and take a look yourself --- you'll see vast swaths of "city" that more closely resemble countryside.)

The only problem with farming in Detroit, of course, is that you'd need to erect a ten foot high concrete wall, topped with razor wire, to protect your livestock from drive-by shootings. So, for now, Glemie Dean Beasley seems to have the right idea:

Beasley, a 69-year-old retired truck driver who modestly refers to himself as the Coon Man, supplements his Social Security check with the sale of raccoon carcasses that go for as much $12 and can serve up to four. The pelts, too, are good for coats and hats and fetch up to $10 a hide.

While economic times are tough across Michigan as its people slog through a difficult and protracted deindustrialization, Beasley remains upbeat.

Where one man sees a vacant lot, Beasley sees a buffet.

"Starvation is cheap," he says as he prepares an afternoon lunch of barbecue coon and red pop at his west side home.

His little Cape Cod is an urban Appalachia of coon dogs and funny smells. The interior paint has the faded sepia tones of an old man's teeth; the wallpaper is as flaky and dry as an old woman's hand.

Beasley peers out his living room window. A sushi cooking show plays on the television. The neighborhood outside is a wreck of ruined houses and weedy lots.

"Today people got no skill and things is getting worse," he laments. "What people gonna do? They gonna eat each other up is what they gonna do."

A licensed hunter and furrier, Beasley says he hunts coons and rabbit and squirrel for a clientele who hail mainly from the South, where the wild critters are considered something of a delicacy.

Go read the whole thing. It's fun.

H/T: Anthony G.