Occasionally we trapped one but they were wonderfully sagacious in avoiding a trap. I had a trap set where I could see it from the house; one day I was sure I had a black fox, and ran in wild excite- ment to get it; to my disappointment it was only a crow. My brothers had a great laugh at me. I was attentive when any new scheme for catching animals or birds was suggested or reported.

Catching a Fox With a Fisk/200k

One of my uncles who lived "Over the Lake”, had a horse that died; he pulled the carcase out to the open field, near the seashore. It was a great place for foxes. One day when this uncle and his brother were out in the field they thought they saw something moving about the dead horse. When they went near they could not see any living thing there but there were fox tracks all about. The foxes had eaten into the stomach of the horse until there was a large cavity into which they could get. In turning away one of my uncles caught sight of two bright eyes looking out from the back of this cavity. The fox had backed in tail first and was hiding in the den he had made in the horse’s stomach. He did not dare come out. My uncle poked a stick in, the fox would bite it, but would not leave its well fortified place; yet to come out was the safest thing for him to do; he would come so swifty they could not catch him. or if they did they would get badly bitten. A fox bites viciously. How to capture that fox was the problem to be solved. It tested the wits of my uncles, and they were very witty men. They wanted to get it alive if possible. They saw it would bite a stick and they concluded it would bite a hook. One of them went home and got a squid hook—a squid hook is made by fastening a number of small codhooks on the end of a stick. This would hook from all sides. It was used as a gaff for catching squid

for fish bait.

When my uncles put this hooked stick into the den the fox grab- bed it with a savage bite; it hooked into his mouth on all sides; the more he pulled back the deeper the hooks would go; he howled and scratched but could not break loose. When uncle pulled him out he jumped and raced around like a wild colt. It was a cruel way to cap- ture an animal; any kind of a trap, that grips the animal, is cruel.

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