The Fox and the Hound (18 page)
There was a good breeze blowing and as Tod glided along through the cover - for in broad daylight he never exposed himself if he could help it - he caught the strong smell of the Man. If he had been on one of the farms where men were supposed to be, Tod would have paid no attention to him: nor should the jay have screamed. But the Man was on the overgrown slope of a hill, one of Tod's favorite hunting grounds, where men never went if they were attending to their own affairs.
Still keeping downwind of the human, Tod snaked through the cover until he could see him. He was making one of the caches. For the first time, Tod saw how the iron thing was put in the V.
When the men finally left, Tod went over to investigate. Everything looked as usual, but he circled the spot for a long time. He could smell the fish-oil lure and the bait - it was muskrat this time. At long last, he edged in cautiously, alert for any new device that might be awaiting him. With his nose checked every inch of the ground as he progressed, not only for the smell of iron but also for the odor of freshly turned earth. He also used his eyes, studying the ground ahead before putting his foot down to see if anything had been disturbed. His whole body was tense, ready to leap instantaneously if the ground moved beneath him. Occasionally he would pat the ground lightly with one extended forepaw before putting his weight on the spot.
He reached the edge of the V. Sniffing, he could easily smell the iron thing under the loose soil. Always heretofore the traps had smelled of butternut wood or balsam, which hid the odor of iron, but there was no scent here except that of the trap. Tod could tell exactly where it was. Delicately he scooped out earth to one side of it until he could insert one paw underneath. Then he gave his flip.Instead of leaping up, the trap went off under the ground, and Tod to his indescribable horror felt the jaws seize his paw. The trap had been set upside down. Even as the jaws closed, Tod threw himself backward. His foot tore free. Tod was so amazed and startled he stood staring at the partly exposed trap. Then in a blind fury he tore it up by the chain and shook it like a rabbit. The jaws were still slightly open for a small stone had wedged between them. In his relief and anger, Tod defecated on the thing until he could force nothing more from his straining bowels. He left the trapline alone for the next couple of days because his foot was still sore; but the temptation to outwit the human proved so strong that on the third morning he went back to checking the line.
So exquisitely sensitive was Tod's touch that after a little experimentation he could tell by feeling the edges of the traps how they were set, If they were set in the normal way, he flipped them up from below. If they were set upside down, he dug down from the top until he reached the release catch and jarred it loose. For two nights he systematically sprang all the traps along the line, confident now that he understood the whole system. These traps were not chained to a stake, buy to a drag that moved with the trap so a fox could not free himself by a quick jerk as Tod had done before.
The next night he found a cache freshly baited, and located the trap without trouble. He dug under it. It was upside down, so Tod began to dig in from above. The trap jumped to meet him. The jaws flew shut on his paw. At the same instant there was another explosion under the trap. Two traps had been set, one above the other, the bottom one upside down.
In his fear and agony, Tod ran blindly, the drag bumping behind him. Going at top speed, Tod tore between two rocks. Here the drag caught. There was a sudden racking jerk that brung Tod down, but when he got up again he was free. The trap had been tom from his paw.
Tod limped for many days afterward. It would seem incredible that after such a lesson he would again return to springing traps, yet he did. Tod needed excitement almost as much as he did food. The jug hunters with their nocturnal hunts had provided it for a while, but the country was getting built up now, and the jug hunters came no more. When Tod was playing with a trap, little spasms of delightful ecstasy trembled through him as the threat of imminent danger set his adrenalin gland pumping blood through his veins. After such an experience Tod could eat the bait with a satisfaction impossible under any other circumstances; and when he rejoined the vixen, he would even try to mount her in play as he never did otherwise. He could no more forego the divine emotion that only danger induced than he could forego the sexual drive. It was to those pulsing shots of adrenalin that Tod owned his quicksilver reflexes, and his whole being revolved around them. He was prepared to run great risks to obtain that thrill, and besides, he had not been really seriously hurt - as yet.
Tod now worked out a new trap-springing technique. Using the side of his paw and employing delicate, surface strokes, he would brush away the loose dirt covering the pan of the trap. Tod usually lay on his side when performing this operation. Once the trap was uncovered, Tod could then see how it was set and how to best deal with it.
Tod began to notice a new odor to the traps - the acrid scent of filed steel where the rough edges of the pin and release catch had been filed away to give the trap a hair trigger set. But he had developed so fine a touch at the ticklish operation of uncovering the pan that no matter how lightly the trap might be set, he did not spring it. Now Tod was sure he was safe; man had nothing more to show him.
One evening as Tod lay brushing the loose earth from a trap's pan, he felt something prick his paw, When Tod tried to jerk his paw away, the thing's curved tip clung to his fur for a fraction of a second - only a fraction, but enough to set off the trap. A fishhook had been soldered to the pan, and this time Tod was caught full and fair.
Tod spun around and ran. For a wonderful moment he thought he could escape even with the trap fastened to his foot, as he had before, but when he came to the end of the chain he was thrown down with a force that sent spasms of torture up his leg. This time the chain was not fastened to a drag, but to a stake. Now it was Tod's turn to rave and tear at the iron jaws, to bite at his own leg, to tear up the ground in a circle around the immovable stake, and finally to fall exhausted and panting on the snow. He fought in silence; no sound escaped him in spite of his pain. Time and again he rushed the full length of the chain, only to be brought down again.
He tried to chew his foot off, but it was not numb enough yet to be anesthetized. He knew well what would happen to him when the trapper returned. He had smelled the fate of other foxes caught in the bloody snow. Frantic, Tod made another rush, racing from one side of the circle he had made straight across to the far edge. Again he was pulled off his feet, but the abrupt yank had jerked his foot a fraction of an inch clear.
Tod collapsed gasping. Spasms of pain ran up his leg, and he wanted to do nothing but lie still and suffer. Still, he forced himself to stand, and then made another rush. The fearful tearing jerk was almost more than he could bear, but again his pad was pulled slightly through the trap's jaws. Again and again he made the effort, until his tortured brain refused to function and he fought in a haze of suffering without purpose or hope, yet always running the full length of the long chain to build up momentum for the final yank. How many rushes he made he did not know; yet finally, after one rush, he pitched forward and somersaulted on the snow. He struggled to his feet and charged on again. This time the chain did not yank him back, and he went on and on, falling, recovering himself, and still making wild rushes, unable to realize that at last he was free.
He could see nothing and smell nothing, yet he fought his way forward, caroming off trees and plunging through brush. Then he felt himself falling, and hit ice-cold water. As he went under, the shock brought him to his senses. Too weak to struggle, he let the current carry him downstream. He was drowning but he did not care. A bridge of ice had formed across the stream, and here he was stranded. For hours, Tod lay there barely conscious. The deep black of the shadows faded into gray as day came under an overcast sky. Still Tod did not move.
Then he heard it - Copper's deep-mouthed bay. The sound was far upstream where the trap was. The Man had brought the hound to trail him. Dimly Tod heard the hound triumphantly throwing his voice on the well-marked line, and then the baying ceased. Copper had come to the stream and was checked.
He would not be checked long, and Tod knew it. He had learned from experience that the hound understood well how to run the banks until he picked up the trail again. Tod dragged himself up the shore. Whenever he tried to stand, his leg buckled under him, and he was too weak to run on three legs. Foot by foot he wormed his way along through a pine plantation planted for a watershed. Of course the hound would find where he had crawled up the bank; still, he had to go on.
Raindrops began to leak through the mat of needles overhead. The drops came down more and more heavily until, as the full force of the storm broke, rivulets formed, pouring past and around him toward the stream. Soon the whole hillside was awash. Tod had been pulling himself forward with the dewclaw of his good leg, but that could no longer hold in the rush of water. He was finished. Tod collapsed and waited for the end.
He heard the Man and Copper coming along the far bank of the stream. Then came the sound of splashing as they crossed. Now they were on his side. It would not be long now.
Automatically, Tod's nostrils twitched, trying to smell them, but the torrential rain had washed all scent away. The Man and Copper passed within ten feet of him, the Man calling encouragement to the hound. Then they went on. Tod lay still, not believing his good luck. Surely they would return. They never did.
The rain stopped shortly before noon. Tod was sufficiently recovered to limp to an old woodchuck hole he knew and craw down it. Here he lay for two days.
It was the vixen who found him. Several times during those two days Tod had heard her bark, calling for him, yet he had not answered. He was too despondent to care. On the evening of the third day he was so desperate for water he crept down to the stream for a drink, and the vixen, casting about through the woods, hit his trail. She followed it to the woodchuck burrow.
Having found him, the vixen had no idea what to do. She seemed more annoyed than sympathetic, snarling and hissing at the burrow's mouth, although when she wriggled down the hole she licked his injured foot assiduously. Then she went hunting for herself. She brought him no food that night, but the next evening she arrived with a rabbit. Apparently she had not brought it as food; she had killed the rabbit on her way and carried it with her, not finding a good place to cache it in the frozen ground. Tod was now furiously hungry, and when the vixen crouched down by the burrow and started to eat the rabbit, not knowing what else to do with it, Tod pulled himself out and attacked her. After a hissing, snapping, screaming session the vixen retreated while Tod bolted the still-warm flesh. Afterward, he felt much stronger. The vixen stood watching him, and from then on, brought him food regularly.
A fierce cold spell set in that actually benefited the foxes, although Tod had to lie on his injured foot to keep it from freezing. After dark, the vixen canvassed the plantation, stepping lightly over the guano six inches deep left by thousands of grackles, cowbirds, and starlings that used the pines as a roost. Every few yards she would find a bird frozen to death, and after eating her fill she would bring the rest to Tod. She could carry three birds at one time, lining them up side by side and then carefully running her long lower jaw under the trio and lifting them together. Gradually Tod recovered. Luckily for him, no bones had been broken, although he would always favor that foot, especially after a hard night's run.
At long last, Tod had learned his lesson and from then on he stopped playing with traps. The very odor of the fish-oil lure was enough to cause him to make a wide detour. He even sedulously avoided the caches of other foxes, not knowing for sure if they were genuine or a trapset. The most luscious woodchuck or delightfully "high" muskrat could be buried temptingly a few inches from the surface, and it was safe from Tod. He no longer ran casually over horseshoes or bits of old iron; the mere scent of such things alarmed him.
In spite of her innate fear of man, the vixen was more indifferent to danger than Tod, She had neither Tod's terrible experience nor his knowledge of traps, and as long as the presence of man was not too obvious she felt that she was safe. Although she was routinely cautious, she did not adopt the elaborate precautions that Tod did now that he had some understanding of how a trap and a man worked together.
There came a severe blizzard, and for once the foxes were hard put to find food. Territorial boundary lines were forgotten as all foxes roamed the countryside indiscriminately in their search. In a pinch, they could dig up corncobs in the fields, find a few forgotten windfall apples, or even chew the bark of branches; but the craving for meat grew increasingly intense. It not not simply hunger: the meat provided protein their systems craved, and the fur or feathers of their quarry gave them oils they needed. Even a mouse became a valuable catch, and every morning there were fresh tracks around the farmers' chicken houses, which were seldom bothered in better times.