Teacher's Pets: And Other Wildlife

Back in the mid-1960's in Pearsall, Texas, Jim Cranford was an over-worked, underpaid elementary school teacher. During one amazing fall semester Jim was offered some relief from his financial miseries. Help came in the form of a moonlighting job as a weekend cook for a corporate hunting lodge. The teacher-turned-cook faced a bizarre mix of hunters and prey on those weekends. The resulting escapades of that mix could have set the hunting industry on its ear and possibly initiated calls to have Texas removed from the Union. But catching poachers, chasing coyotes and surviving wild hog attacks are only part of the story. Jim's baptism by fire as a part-time, rookie chef, the adventures at the hunting camp and his day-to-day interactions with Pearsall's 3rd graders produced a remarkable series of events that forever changed his life. In fact, in some people's estimation, those events might have come close to disrupting the smooth rotation of the earth on her precarious axis. One could charge that those claims sound like teasers, planted strategically for no other purpose than to entice book buyers. Guilty, your honor. However, since you're here and not expected to address the United Nations General Assembly at this particular moment, take a minute and have a look. Discover in this fact-based story how Jim Cranford spent a lifetime one November many years ago. By day imparting knowledge to his students, while in his spare time protecting captains of industry from flying lead and wild animals. Even with all that, he managed to run head-on into true love.