Chapter 29: Thomas's Desperate Move

  Watching the little ones play for a while, I decided to leave my sister's husband and dad to continue watching them play. Looking at that poor sheep being tossed around, its life hanging by a thread, I thought to myself, next time I'll get a few more, take turns playing with them. The sheep is already on the verge of exhaustion, if it gets played to death by the little ones, we can only eat mutton then.

  Entering the house, I found that my mother and sister had already chopped up the filling and were preparing to make dumplings at noon.

  Yu An went out to greet her sister and brother-in-law to come in and help, also greeted the little ones to go inside and wash their hands, which can be considered as rescuing a lamb from the clutches of the little monsters.

  Looking at the chattering little guy hopping into the house, he walked over to Ju An and said, "Did you see me fall off the sheep, Second Master?"

  Yu An was taken aback, and for the first time, Rong Rong took the initiative to talk to himself. He came back to his senses, patted the small cowboy hat on Rong Rong's head, and praised him: "Second Master saw it, Rong Rong is a brave little man."

  After listening to Ju An's praise, Xiao Ruan Ruan straightened her small chest again: "It's a pity that Auntie didn't take a photo today. Next time, I'll ask Auntie to take a photo and show it to Dad and Mom. I can even do a backflip now!"

  "Let's take a better photo tomorrow, and then Auntie or Uncle can help you take a more beautiful one to show Mom and Dad." Yu An promised, after all, it wasn't like she was taking the photo herself, and using others to curry favor was something she was used to doing.

  Watching the little guy happily running into the house, Ju An also lifted her foot and followed in.

  Arrange four little rascals, wash their hands and face, then wipe them with a towel, and let them go to the dinner table to learn how to wrap dumplings.

  The traditional task of making dumpling wrappers at home was taken over by her brother-in-law, and the task assigned to Ju An by her mother was to teach the little ones how to wrap dumplings.

  "Emily, you can't eat that, it's raw." Tongtong has sharp eyes and discovers Emily wrapped a dumpling-like thing and is about to put it in her mouth, so she quickly stops her.

  Then, Ju An didn't dare to be lazy and carefully paid attention to the four little guys. He then taught the two little foreigners how to wrap dumplings hand in hand. After wrapping two small dumplings, the little ones became mischievous and started playing with the dough. Ju An could only watch from the side as the several little ones shouted non-stop.

  Clear and crisp children's voices mixed with English and Chinese.

  "Look, I've got a little pig."

  "Watch! I have a cat" is having a great time playing.

  When cooking dumplings, they also specially cooked a pot of their little cat and pig according to the requirements of the little guy.

  When the food was served, the kitten and piglet could no longer see its shape, but they ate with relish.

  Everyone saw using chopsticks, Little Jerry and Emily also shouted to learn, Mom accepted this task, taught for a while, two little foreigners, can use it, although not very skilled, but put dumplings into mouth, that's no problem at all, basically the same as Tongtong, small mouth on the edge of plate, then one small hand holding plate, another holding chopsticks to pull into mouth, one in is one.

  If several aunts of Jū ān saw two little foreigners, they must have guessed who taught them to use chopsticks. Because in Jū ān's family, among the siblings and cousins, only their mother uses chopsticks with her hands crossed, picking up things in an X shape. Among the cousins, three of Jū ān's siblings also hold chopsticks this way, plus one uncle, who has been eating at Jū ān's house since he was a kid until he was in first grade.

  The little ones ate a lot together, each eating half a big plate. In the end, it was still the sister who worried about eating too much and stopped them. She had them sit in the two chairs under the corridor to digest their food before running off to play.

  After Old Thomas came back, another big pot was cooked, and several foreigners also ate with relish.

  After lunch, Ju An suggested that everyone go fishing in the afternoon. Old Thomas then said that he would also go there that afternoon to show off his skills.

  The little ones heard about fishing and also came with interest, clamoring for them to prepare fishing rods. Ju An had no choice but to find four round wooden bars, then tie up the fishing line, the fishing line was tied with a colorful fish float, and a small fish hook was hung, a simple small fishing rod was made.

  On the way, because Dad rode a horse, Ju'an finally felt comfortable. Ju'an carried Tongtong, and Dad carried Rangrang. Xiaojie and Emily sat on the fuel tank in front of their sister's four-wheeler, while Mom had to straddle the back of her sister's four-wheeler. Fortunately, they arrived at the Shuitangzi in about 10 minutes.

  As soon as we arrived at the reservoir, before An even got off his horse, Tongtong exclaimed: "Brother, look! There's a little deer, and its tail is still white!" The old man and the others had only seen animals in the zoo before, but they were excited to observe this one in the wild. This was a common sight in Montana, known as a White-tailed Deer, which ran very fast with a beautiful posture, jumping as it went.

  Mom said: "Is this also raised on your ranch?"

  "Wild, who has nothing better to do and raises this thing."

  "My brother-in-law said: 'Is nobody going to hit him?'"

  "Generally, only male deer are hunted, and female deer are rarely killed. If foreign tourists want to hunt and kill deer, they need to pay over $100, and there is a quota for how many male deer can be hunted. These few deer basically live on the ranch, and you can see them every day. What's the point of hunting them? They won't harm the pasture grass. Except during hunting season, locals rarely hunt deer. The land here is vast and sparsely populated, with many deer. Sometimes when driving on the road, a deer might suddenly run out from the side."

  Everyone looked at the deer and sighed, then dispersed to find a place to fish. The old mother was not interested in fishing, and followed behind the little ones, telling them not to play with water.

  After a while, the adults had a harvest, and they all caught a few small fish. Little Emily was lucky and even caught a finger-long small fish, which made her extremely excited.

  At this time, Old Thomas rode up on his Jefferson and came closer to take a look. Old Thomas was wearing a high-collared undershirt with a beautiful silk cord hanging from the buttonhole.

  "Thomas, are you planning on camping here?"

  Old Thomas smiled, shrugged his shoulders, dismounted from the horseback, held the colorful rope in his hand and said: "I can fish with this rope."

  "Then you go up a bit, I just made a fish nest here, don't scare away my fish."

  Thomas smiled and nodded, walked about ten meters away from everyone, put on his swimsuit and walked into the pool, then swung the rope up and hit it on the lake surface.

  "Are you fishing or driving fish?"

  "Sure thing, fishing, you'll see right away," Thomas replied.

  He also watched Thomas swing a few times, but didn't see any fish come up, so he focused on watching his own float.

  After a little while, old Thomas was heard shouting: "Got it, good fish!"

  With a glance, Thomas swung a one-foot-long fish onto the shore, and several of them ran over to take a look.

  The old man looked at the fish jumping wildly in the grass on the shore and said, "It's really a different wind in ten miles, and fishing can be done like this."

  Everyone put the fish in a small bucket and stood on the side to watch Old Thomas perform. The little guys also put down their small fishing rods and gathered around.

  Old Thomas occasionally whipped the water surface with a fine rope. Before long, another fish was swung up by Old Thomas.

  "Wow, this is incredible! A rope can even catch fish!"

  Two more fell off one after another, and Thomas got ashore. Ju An took over the rope in his hand and looked at it himself. Except for being a bit more colorful, there was nothing special about it.

  "Colorful, easy to attract fish, making them think it's an insect flying over, notice without, fine line after tying a small knot, so when the fish swallow, biting the knot will have a slight pause, then want to throw the fish ashore at this time, slow or fast doesn't work, and requires the fish to be wild, jumping out of the lake surface to eat insects, domesticated fish won't come up like this".

  Jū ān biàn jiē guò le shéng zǐ, zhàn zài àn biān bǎ shéng zǐ sàng jìn shuǐ miàn, lái huí shuǎi le jǐ cì, yě méi kàn dào guò yǒu yú shàng lái, yáo le yáo tóu jiù shōu le shéng zǐ shuō: "Hái zhēn de shì gè jì shù huó".

  "First, you have to go to a place with deeper water, that's where the big fish are," Thomas said with a smile. "Look at what I'm wearing, it's to ensure the water is deep enough. Also, fishing requires consideration of your wrist, eyesight, and experience, it's not something you can learn in one or two months. The way you're casting now, you won't catch anything. This technique was passed down from my grandfather, and there aren't many people who know how to do it nowadays." Thomas sighed wistfully.

  "Wow, this technique is so cool, doesn't anyone learn it?"

  Thomas shrugged: "Now who still learns this skill, even my father didn't learn it. I only learned it when I was a kid following my grandfather. Catching fish is much easier with other methods, and even if you want to learn, it's not something that can be mastered in a short time. At least one or two years of practice are needed. Many old techniques have no one to inherit them, maybe in the future, fishing with ropes will become a joke. Old traditions are becoming fewer and fewer, new things are emerging more and more, constantly eroding the old methods."

  "Just think of it as progress, humans used to catch fish with their hands before the invention of nets, and now that skill is slowly disappearing, so let's just consider it a kind of progress."

  Thomas also smiled and said: "It's true, old things are always replaced by new ones, that's just life, what's there for me to be sad about?"

  A few little guys on the side listened with a half-understanding, and after listening, they would disperse in an instant. Then, taking their small fishing rods, they asked their mothers to remove the fish hooks. A little fellow stood in one place, casting his fishing line into the water, but after a while, he started using the rod to playfully tap the water.

  Just as it was about to escalate into a water fight, my mother quickly stopped the nonsense of several little ones. The little ones calmed down for a while and then went together to scare away the small deer that came to drink water in the pond. The poor thing wanted to drink water several times but couldn't, so it had to run far away from them to drink water. Ah, you freeloaders also have today, thought with a happy heart.