Cunning Trappers
The skilled trapper, setting a baited trap for vermin, places it at such a distance from the bait that the creature he wishes to catch cannot reach the food without treading on the pan. Just when it can reach the prize is the moment when it is most likely to overstep the safety-line: desire overcomes suspicion. A fox, if so minded, can reach over the pan, and take the bait of a trap properly set for vermin, without risking a pad. Yet he seldom takes a bait: he detects the scent of man for a longer time than a trap is likely to remain unvisited. A keeper with an experience of more than twelve years vouches for it that though he used a hundred traps for vermin he never lost a bait through a fox, nor the Hunt a fox through a bait. But one keeper surpassed the cunning of the fox. A certain fox had troubled him greatly by too frequent visits to his poultry-run. He decided to attempt to trap it at the bottom of a chalk-pit near by, where the fox went to eat his suppers. Before setting his trap he sacrificed some half-dozen chickens on different days, with a two-fold object: in order to practise throwing a chicken from the top of the chalk-pit so that it should fall exactly where he desired, and in order to cause the fox to expect to find a meal in the pit. One fine day he set his trap. Then he bided his time until his scent should have passed away: and after four or five days he killed another chicken. Making his way to the top of the chalk-pit, he threw the chicken into a bush at the bottom, where the fox could reach it only by treading on the pan of the trap, which it did that night, at the cost of its life.
