Tales From The Woods #2

"Done for the day," he said with an air of satisfaction, as he walked away from his last array.

It was unusually warm for early April, and the gnats were out in force, buzzing right in front of his eyes, near his ears, a constant to fly into either of those places and annoy him. He'd be glad to get back to his truck and head home. As he started to leave he paused, and looked down the hillside, scanning the trees. Several of the trees had tiger-striped flagging tied to them, and nearby each of those trees was a small, rectangular box made of metal. There was no sign of movement. He sighed. "I really don't want to," he thought "but I suppose I ought to at least make the offer."

He drew his radio from his backpack, pressed the call button, and in his best fake jovial tone, said "Hello down there, coworker! Would you like some help checkin' those traps?"

He released the call button, and after a few seconds where his hopes rose, heard in response, "Sure, I'll meet you at J1."

He radioed a confirmation, hitched his pack up more squarely upon his shoulders, then sighed and set off down the hill. At the appointed spot, he found his coworker, waiting. "Catching much?" he inquired.

"Not really," she replied. "I keep finding traps that are triggered, but empty. or they haven't been triggered, but the bait is still gone. I'm not sure I brought enough spare bait."

He pursed his lips and "Hmm"ed. "Probably raccoons, wouldn't you think?"

"I guess so. They could probably figure out how to grab the bait without tripping the trap, and they're too large to stay caught if they did set it off. I wish they'd cut it out. I have to rebait half the traps every day."

He shrugged. That certainly did sound annoying, and he was glad it wasn't part of his usual daily routine. He had enough problems with fences coming out of the ground, or holes being chewed in his traps. Best to just get this over with. "So, is line J finished?"

The two continued with the work, making decent progress since they could check two lines simultaneously now. Gradually, they made their way up the hill, and what she had said was true. No animals in the traps, and often, no bait either. At least one trap had been damaged to the point it had to be replaced, as something had made quite the effort to pull it completely apart. Finally, at C10, he found himself stymied. He noticed his coworker was at the nearby B10, and called out, "I can't find the trap here."

She looked up, curious, and ambled over to see for herself. They looked around for 10 meters in all directions, and further than that downhill, in case it had rolled or been washed down, though it hadn't rained since before this trapping began. There was no sign of the trap. "That's weird," she remarked "What do you think happened to it?"

"Maybe it was the Ghost of the Forest," he said. "I know it likes to mess with me, why not you?" She laughed in response, as though he'd said something funny, so he smiled and laughed as well, but it was no more real than the tone he'd assumed over the radio earlier.

"It was probably the raccoons," she said. "Though I don't know what they'd want with it." With that, she pulled another spare trap from he sack, opened and baited it, and they continued on their way, as there were still 3 lines not checked yet.

Neither of them saw the den under the fallen tree, where two pairs of beady eyes watched them go, before moving further into the den.

"Explain this to me again." said the first raccoon.

The second responded excitedly. "It's simple. Every night we find food in these shiny hollow logs, and we take it. And the next night, there's always more food! Now we won't have to even leave here to get something to eat, the food will come to us!"

"Uh-huh," the first responded, unconvinced. "You don't think those big things that walk by and check the shiny logs have something to do with the food appearing?"

"What?!" The second replied incredulously. "That's crazy talk! Next you'll be telling me they put those crunchy little things with all the legs and the pinchy hands in the stream!" The second raccoon shook its head, as if terribly amused with the first. "No, those big things are looking for food the same as us. They're just too dumb and clumsy to check at night."

The first raccoon considered this. The big things were clumsy. You could hear them crashing through the brush, from far away, as they made strange, low calls the others of their kind couldn't possibly hear. That one today, that had noticed the shiny log was missing, had been making such noises almost constantly. "Dayumthorns" was common, whatever that meant. It really was amazing those big creatures didn't starve.

So maybe the raccoon's friend was right, and the food appeared in the log some other way. It couldn't hurt to test it and see.

End

And with that, I'm off for the weekend. Posting should resume Monday!