| The animal had approached the pen expecting to do as it had always done before. It was too confident and was not careful about its approach. Stepping on the nails was a mistake that Walking Tree didn’t expect the creature to make twice. He had stepped on a board with a nail in it when he was a child, ever since then he learned to feel with his foot before putting his weight all the way down on it. He had no reason to not think the beast would not learn also. The real question was whether the beast would come back for more? Walking Tree didn’t care to take any chances. Plus it was an idea he had been considering. That next day he went to town and brought back a set up for wiring an electric fence. The funny thing about this electric fence was that it was made up of two strands of wire, one he ran about three feet off the ground, the second one was strung at the height of five feet. Everything stayed quiet for about two weeks. Then there was a morning of mourning. Walking Tree woke up to find all his rabbits either dead or missing. He supposed some of them might have gotten away in the darkness but there were heads and feet and ears laying everywhere. It had got past the electric fence and had this time been quiet. Taken its time and killed every rabbit. Further investigation revealed the electric fence had been taken out with a tree. It was thrown across the two wires and then it looked like it was stepped on to get across the fence. Most likely the beast was possibly first shocked but then its weight grounded the wires when it stepped on the tree laying across the fence. Most likely the weight of the beast caused the wires to snap loose from their plastic holders and then the whole thing was quickly grounded or the beast was passed it. Either way it proved incompetent for the job. next page |  |