Mitch the Trapper

About Mitch the Trapper

Mitch works the rural edges of Poulsbo mostly alone, headlamp on before sunrise, out past where downtown's lights give way to the properties backed up against second-growth timber toward Bond Road. The same early hours that make for good trapping — quiet, cold, before the wildlife's moved on for the day — turn out to be exactly the hours a driveway needs clearing before whoever lives there has to leave for work. It's a small operation, one truck and a plow blade, working long gravel driveways that wind back from the road further than most in-town lots ever would, snow pushed to the tree line rather than a curb that isn't there. Out on those properties the quiet holds a little longer than it does near the bay, frost lingering in the shade until well past the hour downtown's already dry, and clearing a driveway out there means getting to it before that frost sets hard.