The Fox and the Hound (17 page)

=====

Fourth Hunt - Trapping

There was almost no autumn that year. Winter struck early and hard. The frozen ground hurt the foxes' pads and they had few caches to fall back upon. The scent world had changed. At night, the intense cold "froze" scent so it could not evaporate, and the foxes were forced to hunt after daylight when the sun's warmth thawed the oily scent particles sufficiently to allow them to rise.

The habits of the game also changed. Rabbits were no longer found in open fields but crouching in brushpiles or sometimes in drainpipes. Quail, grouse, and pheasants went to roost deep in honeysuckle tangles, as they would have frozen to death in trees. The foxes might not have survived the winter had it not been for their teamwork. They nearly always hunted in couples now, the vixen either following Tod and often stepping in his footprints, or else running parallel to him some fifteen yards to one side. When they came to a brushpile, they would separate and approach it from both sides so that if a rabbit darted out, one or the other would be ready. If they passed a drain pipe running under a road, one fox would take up a position by one end of the pipe while the other ran through it to chase out any rabbits. On these expeditions, Tod would follow the ridges where he had a good view, while the vixen stopped in whatever cover was available. When Tod came to the highest point, he would sit down like a dog and study the surrounding country both with eyes and nose. If either brought him word of game, he would swing around and try to herd it toward the vixen waiting in ambush. So by keeping together they were able to exist, whereas either alone would have grown too weak to hunt.

The intense cold had given both foxes magnificent rich, deep pelts dyed burnt orange, lemon, ebony, and ivory. As the foxes were color-blind, they could not see their own glory, but the coats kept them warm except on the very worst days when even Tod had to take refuge in a burrow.

One morning while Tod was running along a high ridge, he saw the Man who had hunted him with Copper following his route along a fence line. The Man was alone and had a pack basket on his back, but Tod recognized him both by smell and by his manner of walking. Tod stopped at once to watch while the vixen, thinking he had found game, glided into a rhododendron thicket to wait. Curious as usual, Tod watched to see what the human would do. The vixen grew tired of waiting and ran up the ridge to find out what was going on, but when she saw the Man she turned away at once. The vixen had no curiosity about humans, only a deep dread. Tod, on the other hand, had been brought up by a human and lived near them all his life, He knew they were potentially dangerous, as were hounds, but he was confident of his ability to outwit a hound and equally confident he could outwit humans, whom he regarded as a kind of a hound but capable of killing at a distance. As the Man had no gun, he was temporarily harmless.

Seeing he was absorbed with the distant figure, the vixen went about her own business while Tod, after waiting until the Man was out of sight, trotted down the hill and began to trail him, stepping in his tracks. Tod enjoyed the game of stepping exactly in footprints just as when a pup he had followed in his mother’s footprints to make sure not to get lost. As the length of the Man’s stride was so different from his own, Tod made poor time. When he found that the man had left the route along the fence line and gone out into a field, Tod followed in his marks, still playing his game. Then he stopped suddenly. He had caught the strong odor of fish oil.

Tod recognized the scent, having occasionally caught chub and sunfish during summer droughts when pools were low. The smell was very powerful indeed - there even seemed to be some skunk mixed with it - and it exerted a strong attraction. It was not so much that Tod liked to eat fish as it was that he enjoyed the smell for its own sake. Some smells fascinated Tod, such as well-rotted manure, and he liked to roll in them.

Still following the Man's trail, Tod hurried on, thus making a wide swing as the human had done. Now he caught two more odors - the scent of fox urine and the delicious smell of nicely decayed woodchuck. Looking up, Tod saw ahead of him the unmistakable cache of another fox.

Tod was outraged. This was his hunting grounds. Fearful that the intruder might still be about, he approached slowly and cautiously, sniffing at every step. The stranger had left his urine scent mark on a thistle to establish property rights, and Tod’s nose told him the woodchuck cache was right by the thistle. He could easily see where the other fox had scratched up the ground in front of the cache with his hind feet after leaving the scent marker, for there was a V of torn earth, the apex at the thistle and the sides stretching away from it toward his fence-line trail. Tod was hungry, and there was also the satisfaction of teaching this interloper a lesson by stealing his cache.

        Ordinarily Tod would have scented the fish-oil lure while walking along his usual route and cut directly over to it, this approaching the V through the open end. But because he had been following the Man, he came in from behind the thistle. With no trouble, he dug up the piece of woodchuck and bolted it, The fish-oil scent was strong and attractive. Although most of it was concentrated in the cache, a few drops had fallen in the open V. Thinking there might be another cache hidden there, Tod began to dig. The ground was surprisingly soft, and he made it fly.

Suddenly there was an explosion. The earth under his nose flew in all directions. Something leaped up through the loose dirt, and two jaws flashed together with a terrible snap. Tod went straight up in the air, landed on all four feet, and fled like a flicker of light. Then, seeing he was not pursued, he made a long swing and came slowly back.

The thing was lying on top of the ground, motionless. After circling it for half an hour, Tod inched in and smelled at it. The thing smelled of butternut wood and smoke, the odors combining to smother all other smells; but now that it was above ground Tod could get a faint scent of iron. Tod had no fear of iron. On his hunts, he had often run across iron horseshoes in pastures, crawled under iron manure spreaders, and used iron fences as scent posts. Iron meant nothing to him, and even if the thing had smelled to high heaven of iron and been left lying on the surface of the ground, Tod would have stepped into the middle of it without a second thought. The forest-bred vixen would have avoided it as she would have avoided anything connected with man, even a dropped handkerchief or a mislaid spoon, but Tod had no such feelings.

Very carefully, he extended one paw and poked the thing. It moved slightly, and Tod sprang back. After watching with his head on one side, he poked it again. By now he was convinced that the thing was lifeless in spite of the way it had moved. A chain was attached to it, and by pulling the chain Tod tried to drag it off, but the chain was fastened to a stake that held it. After trying to pull the stake up, and failing, Tod ended by contemptuously urinating over the whole affair.

Curious rather than alarmed, Tod continued to track the Man. Half a mile farther on, he smelled the fish-oil again and, following the odor, came on another of the curious caches. This time a burdock had been used as a scent post with the same scratch-mark V in front of it. Profiting from his previous experience, Tod swung around and unearthed the cache from the roots of the burdock, but his constant curiosity prompted him to see if there were another of the iron things in the V. With a careful paw, Tod dug in from the side of the V; and sure enough, within a few inches he touched a hard, curved edge. At once Tot! pulled back, expecting to see this one also leap into the air with a snap, but nothing happened. With fantastic delicacy of touch, Tod reached under the object and gave it the same flip he occasionally used to toss a mouse out of its tunnel. Then he got his explosion. This time Tod felt so proud of himself he not only urinated on the object but covered it with his feces as well

Tod had now acquired two fine pieces of delicious woodchuck well seasoned, and was beginning to enjoy this business. Hurrying on, he found several more of the caches, each with one of the iron objects buried beside it, and he conscientiously sprang them all. Then that evening he came on one that had quite a different smell - a heavy, skunk-like odor - and trotting over to it. Tod found a mink caught by one foot.

The tortured animal had torn up the ground in a circle around the central stake. It lay there panting, watching Tod. Tod's impulse was to spring in and kill the helpless captive; but he was fearful of some trick, and ran around the fatal circle. The mink was too exhausted to do more than turn its head. Then as Tod came closer, the mink writhed to its feet hissing, and tore at the trap. Crazed with pain the prisoner rolled on the ground, his teeth scratching on the iron, and then in his agony tore at his own foot, Tod felt no sympathy for the mink, yet the whole business frightened as well as fascinated him. He could only vaguely realize that had happened, and kept running back and forth, approaching the mink as closely as he dared and then leaping back to run wildly about, half hysterical with excitement and bewilderment. When the mink lay on its side at the edge of the circle, gasping and snarling, Tod crawled in on his belly until their noses were almost touching, and crouched there, snarling back. Then he sniffed at time mink inquisitively until a fresh spasm of the animal made him retreat.

Tod stayed by the mink until the sun was so high that he decided to return to his lying-up place. The stench of fright, the odor of blood the tortured thrashing of the animal all had made a profound impression on him. Tod was able to understand that somehow these iron things could grasp and hold anything they caught even though they were not alive. This was a new idea to Tod, and difficult for him to connect with his past experiences, for to Tod anything that could seize a living creature was alive.

Tod was profoundly puzzled. He had been able to adjust to being hunted by hounds, as the method used by the hounds to track him was not fundamentally different from the manner in which he himself tracked quarry. The efforts made to shoot him at a crossing had not unduly alarmed him - once he realized the danger of firearms - for he could understand how a human would wait in ambush for him while a hound drove him past the spot; after all, this was not too unlike the way he and his mate herded game to each other. These iron things presented a problem totally alien to his was of thought. Still, they could not chase him nor could they kill from a distance. He decided to find out more about them.

From then on, Tod made a circuit of the trapline every night. He invariably sprang each trap after eating the bait. He gained no advantage from springing the traps; he simply enjoyed doing it. Except for the brief rutting season, he took no interest in sex, and generally obtaining food was so simple it had become routine. Tod was bored and he had an active mind. His catholic diet caused him to develop techniques not only for catching game but also for devising means of getting grapes (he did this by climbing into a sloping tree and then jumping down on the grapevines from above) and learning how to get the lids off garbage cans. He had become intensely curious about everything he encountered, and delighted in experimenting with unusual objects to see what would happen. Much of his hunting was play rather than a desire for food. He would go out of his way to stalk a squirrel because he knew how difficult squirrels were to catch. If he succeeded, he often did not bother to eat his kill - the satisfaction of the hunt was enough for him. He enjoyed springing the traps because it was a difficult thing to do. coupled with just enough danger to make it exciting.

He tried taking the vixen around the trapline with him, but she was terrified of the whole business and could not imagine why he found this dangerous sport so pleasurable. She had a deathly fear of man and all his works, and once he showed her that there were traps in the V's before the nice-smelling baits, she refused to go anywhere near them. Being more cautious, she ran fewer risks, but she also learned nothing about traps. Tod became so expert at springing them he grew cocky and overconfident.

Occasionally Tod would find another animal caught, often another fox, for the trapline was not confined to his range, and because it was winter, Tod had no hesitation about trespassing  on adjacent properties. When the captive was a fox, it was usually a this-year's pup. The sight of the trapped fox invariably drove Tod half mad with anxiety. He would run around crying in his frenzy occasionally charging at the victim as though about to attack him and then later digging up a cache of food and bringing it to him. Tod did not precisely feel sorry for the doomed fox - even if he could have released him it is doubtful whether he would have done so, although in the case of a pup his parental feelings might well have been strong enough to cause him to save the prisoner. The scent of fear that poured from the captive like a stinking mist affected Tod's mind, just as the odor of a vixen in heat made it impossible for him to behave normally. He seemed to go temporarily insane. Yet the fact that he would bring the prisoner food (which was never eaten) showed he was not entirely indifferent to the captive's fate. He was especially attentive to pups, and would often stay with them until his nose told him the Man was coming. Then, and not until then, he would slip away.

One morning while Tod was lying up in the lea of a stand of hemlocks, he heard a jay screaming in the valley. There was a standing feud between Tod and jays; many a time they had spoiled some of his most elaborate stalks by flying down and screaming at him, thus warning his quarry. Even so. Tod used the jays as sentinels, for if they screamed at him they also screamed at anything else dangerous or unusual. Tod lay for some time listening to the jay. The bird might be yelling at an owl who had not been able to make it back to the woods when daylight overtook him, or even at another fox. Still, there was a special note of insistency in this bird's voice that made Tod suspect he saw a man. Finally Tod rose, stretched, and made a swing downwind to investigate.