“I wonder what it is that has caught me,” said the little fox boy to himself. “And why didn’t the chicken flutter and try to get away when I jumped on her? That was very funny!”
He soon saw the reason the chicken did not move. It was dead, and Sharp Eyes knew he had not killed it.
“She must have been dead when I jumped on her,” said the little fox boy. “And now to see what has caught me.”
He could move about a little, and, pawing with one of his feet that was not caught, Sharp Eyes brushed the chicken to one side. Then he saw that his left forefoot was caught between two jaws of iron.
“Oh, I’m in a trap!” exclaimed Sharp Eyes. “I never saw a trap before, but this is just what my father said they were like. He told me to keep out of them, but I didn’t see this one. The chicken was in the way, or I might have noticed the trap. Oh dear! I wonder if I will ever get loose!”
Sharp Eyes pulled some more, but the pain in his foot soon made him stop.
“If you had only been alive you could have told me about the trap, and then I wouldn’t have been caught in it,” said Sharp Eyes, speaking to the dead chicken, as though it were alive.
If he had only known, the chicken was put there near the trap, partly covering it, on purpose. It was bait for the trap, just as mousetraps are baited with cheese. And the trap was set in the woods by a hunter who hoped to catch a fox or some other wild animal in it.
The chicken had been killed and put near the trap, for the hunter knew wild animals like such things to eat. And the hunter knew that if a fox came along, the first thing it would do would be to jump for the chicken, thinking it was alive.