The incident on Monday now enters its second phase. One of the boys involved is sitting in the county jail waiting for transport back to where the warrant for his arrest was issued and the other kid has skipped town. Big surprise. Last night I found out that illegal trapping is not handled by the police but by the Division of Wildlife when a game warden knocked on our door. He asked if my husband and I were willing to write out statements describing what happened down on the river and we both said yes.
We talked some about what had happened and I then remembered to tell him about a dead red fox I had seen lying next to the trail on Sunday. I had a feeling that those boys may have had something to do with its death. When I found the fox on Sunday he was lying on his left side looking like he was asleep. He did not have a mark on him. He was strikingly beautiful and I could not imagine why or how he had died. When I saw the body again on Monday I was shocked by the change in it. I realized I must have see him right after he was killed because he now looked like what he was- a corpse. His body had shrunk into itself and the fur was dull, dirty, and matted.
This afternoon we went with the warden back down to the river so I could show him where the trap was and to see if anymore were around. We only found the one that caught Duke. When we first got there I took the warden to the body of the fox and he examined it and took pictures. He could not figure out what had killed it until he turned the body over and found the two bullet holes in its right side. He also found blood in its ear and after running his hands over the body discovered that its back had been broken. It also had long scrap mark on one leg that the game warden said may have come from a snare line. The violence that had been done to this poor animal was sickening.
Yesterday when I told my sister about what had happened on the river she exploded, "You've got to get out of that redneck town!"
Tonight I feel the same way.
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