ANIMALS of MERASHEEN
by Ernie Walsh

The most common animals in Merasheen were sheep. I have faint memory of the last cows around 1950. I remember Father Fyme's and Mr. Billy Pittman's goats: a pig that Uncle Victor Mulrooney reared in a pen on the beach on Soldier's Point, across from Wareham's Store; Mr. George Wilson's old horse "Holly"; Donald Wilson's horse "Beauty": and Kevin Fulford's Newfoundland Pony "Goldie." I had left Merasheen when Father Philip Lewis had a cow, probably around 1963-64. Of course, there were lots of dogs, cats and rats. I saw a few mice come out of a few new bags of flour, but as they came out in different years, they never reproduced.

I remember about 1950, seeing the first beavers in cages on the beach over by the Parish Hall as the Wildlife people waited for men to carry them in over the hills. They did well, and the hunters did well trapping them, but apparently, in recent years they have not been seen. The Caribou, introduced in the mid-sixties, are also doing well.

When were the rabbits put on Merasheen Island? Otter families are being sighted more frequently each year. Muskrats were trapped by my father. Are they still out there?

Our family pretty well always had a cow. Mom told me she would go with her bucket and stool and meet our cow, Daisey, usually outside of Mr. Ned Hennessey's fence, on the Co-op side. She would tie on the cow's head to the fence and milk about two gallons, morning and evening. Many of our neighbours would come with a quart jug, and she would fill them. Aunt Theresa Hann's cow would go into our Store Loft in the spring to eat some potatoes that were spread out on the floor to dry. One sunny day, the cow was enjoying the potatoes when one of our children rushed in shoutin to turn her out of the Store Loft. The cow got frightened and swallowed the potato in her mouth, and it got stuck in her wind pipe. The nearest man that they found at the time was Mr. Pats Hynes. He put his arm down full length in the cow's throat and could touch the potato with the tips of his fingers but couldn't get it out, and the cow died. Another one of our cows fell over a bank between the Jigging Cove in Little Merasheen and the Fox Point. Other cows, I heard, fell off the many ledges of the Long Point Hill and above the Burnt. Grandmother, Leah and John Ennis, had quite a few cows or bulls. When grandmother relocated to Placentia in the early 50s, we got five or six cow skins. Pop used them for mats on the trap store loft and in the summer I used to cut pieces off to make fancy pistol/six shooter holsters for my guns and my friends’ guns. Sometimes, we'd make cow hide belts. Boy, they were some sharp! [brown ones, black and white, etc.]

Christmas Eve morning was the time to catch and butcher the first ram from the winter's stock. When I was old enough, but still not probably big enough, Pop would give me the task of rounding our sheep up - usually from the graveyard hill and the church. He would wait at the end of the lane between Mr. Jack Barry's and Mr. Ned Hennessey's fence. We also hoped that some other adult might be walking the road and help us catch our ram. The road was also about 15 feet wide along there, and sometimes we couldn't catch the one we wanted, and it might take a half hour or more to herd the sheep back again. One Christmas, John Pearson ran one of our rams so long and so far that he finally lay down and couldn't run any longer, as he was beat right out. He finally stopped on the side of the Big Hill above Mrs. Kate Wilson's. Helping your father or someone else butcher a ram and being strong enough to hold their legs together with your hands only was another measure of growing up. You were then permitted to help with the skinning.

The front quarter and some of the ribs would be the meal for Sunday dinner. The heart and liver would be fried up and eaten when we returned from midnight mass. I haven't tasted, smelled, or eaten mutton since like the meals our rams and sheep would make. The sheep skins would be sheared and the wool washed and cleaned. Some was carded and spun into yarn for knitting sweaters, socks, mitts and woollen underwear, etc. The spinning wheel would be set up in the kitchen during the winter months. Much of the wool in the 50s was packed and jammed into a flour sack, weighed and mailed through the
Post Office to William Condon 61 Sons, Charlottetown, PEI, where it was made into a 100% Pure Wool Blanket. Mr. Mike Casey would have many a bag of wool to carry to the steamer during the winter months.

Everyone had a different way of marking their sheep and lambs. Some used a scissors and made notches in the ear, or cut off the top of the ear or marked both ears. Our mark was two round holes in each ear. We would redden a straight iron poker in the hot coals in the kitchen stove and have the one month old lambs outside in the corner of the garden. A lamb would be taken into the kitchen and pinned still between your two legs and someone else would hold open the lamb's ear flat and the holes would be burned through the ear with the red hot poker. The lamb would "Baa" just a little and run off to its mother.

Rod Pomroy told me that it was a "Government Bull” that Mr. Pats Hynes kept in the meadow by his property in the Mooring Cove. The government bull, as I understand, would be shipped into an area and bred with the local community cows in an effort to improve the stock. The bull, as I recall, was still in the meadow in the early 1950s. We would keep to the far side of the road when we walked by the top of the meadow. The older boys sometimes would venture inside the meadow and taunt the bull into chasing them. He would and they would clamber out over the fence. Waving something red also brought the bull up snorting close to the fence. My best memory of the bull is Mr. Pats Hynes walking him down to Uncle Jack Hann's wharf with a rope on a ring in his nose. He was shipping the bull into St. John's via the schooner, "Catherine Mary Hann," skippered by Captain Gerald Hann and brothers Mike and Pad, who were well known by all in Merasheen. A canvas sling was wrapped under the bull's stomach and ropes come up both sides and were hooked to a block and tackle, swung from the overhead boom mounted on the spar. Pad Hann put a few turns of rope around the gurdy and engaged the hoisting engine to lift the bull aboard. I'm guessing the bull might be 1200 pounds or more and, when the strain came on, the bull leaned in against the wharf for a while. As the bull was swung aboard, the Catherine Hann straightened up, and the bull was lowered into the ship's hold. Everyone present cheered at a job well done. All the school children were observing the last sight of the bull being loaded aboard from the hill above Mr. Mike Pittman's stage and, when the bull went out of sight, we were ordered back to our classrooms by the teachers.

Rod Pomroy also has related to me many times of how his father Pat and Fergus Pomroy brought Father Fyme's big smelly Billy Goat from St. Kyran's to Merasheen in their trap skiff and how they saved the goat's life outside the Westard Head, where he tried to jump overboard; but you'll have to ask Pat and Rod about that one, as it was before my time.

Margaret Ennis caught one of our rams in her swing she had left hanging down in the doorway of Mr. Johnny Ennis‘ stable overnight. They found the ram with the swing twisted around her neck in the morning, quite dead. Margaret was frightened, and her father told her she had to tell Mr. Din Pat. She did and got a good feed of mutton - earlier than usual - in November.