Some creatures, after they have been trapped and have escaped, learn
the lesson of their lives, and are never trapped again, while others
find no moral at the end of their adventure, and live to adorn the
gallows. It is very seldom that a rat is trapped twice. Scores escape
from traps at the expense of a leg; this is a common matter, but a
man may trap vermin for a lifetime and yet never catch a three-legged
rat. Stoats, on the other hand, far less cunning than rats, are often
trapped again after escaping with the loss of a foot. We have known a
stoat trapped by its last remaining leg, after having been about for
a long time on one leg and three stumps. A keeper who was at special
pains to preserve the foxes on his ground was much upset by the way
in which his neighbours killed them. One year his anxiety for his
cubs was so great that he caught them all in weak gins--and released
them. He knew that after this experience the cubs would never allow
themselves to be again caught in a gin. On the same principle, keepers
sometimes net and release their own partridges, hares and rabbits, to
save them from falling into the meshes of poachers. In the ordinary
way, the fox is never caught in a trap set for other vermin--or foxes
would have been extinct years ago. If they could be trapped as easily
as the ordinary cat, twenty-four hours would be enough for catching
every fox in the country.
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