Page:Saunders - Beautiful Joe, 1893.djvu/200

Rh made me laugh so much that I was very unwilling to shoot him."

"You said your steel traps were cruel things, uncle," said Miss Laura. "Why didn't you have a deadfall for the foxes as you had for the bears?"

"They were too cunning to go into deadfalls. There was a better way to catch them though. Foxes hate water, and never go into it unless they are obliged to, so we used to find a place where a tree had fallen across a river, and made a bridge for them to go back and forth on. Here we set snares, with spring poles that would throw them into the river when they made struggles to get free, and drown them. Did you ever hear of the fox, Laura, that wanted to cross a river, and lay down on the bank pretending that he was dead, and a countryman came along, and thinking he had a prize, threw him in his boat and rowed across, when the fox got up and ran away?"

"Now, uncle," said Miss Laura, "you're laughing at me. That couldn't be true."

"No, no," said Mr. Wood, chuckling, "but they're mighty cute at pretending they're dead. I once shot one in the morning, carried him a long way on my shoulders, and started to skin him in the afternoon, when he turned around and bit me enough to draw blood. At another time, I dug one out of a hole in the ground. He feigned death. I took him up, and threw him down at some distance, and he jumped up and ran into the woods."

"What other animals did you catch when you were a boy?" asked Mr. Maxwell.

"Oh, a number. Otters and beavers—we caught them in deadfalls and in steel traps. The mink we usually took in deadfalls, smaller, of course, than the ones we