Dennis Hollingsworth

Trapping Hey Digger

Hanna described Martin in this way:

There was once a fox who was so utterly without cunning that he not only constantly fell into traps but could not even distinguish a trap from what was not a trap.?

.? After this fox had spent his entire youth in other people?s traps ? he decided to completely withdraw from the fox world, and began to build a den [Fuchsbau].? He built himself a trap as a den, sat down in it, pretended it was a normal den (not out of cunning, but because he had always taken the traps of others for their dens).? This trap was only big enough for him.? Nobody could fall into his trap, because he was sitting in it himself.? If one wanted to visit him in the den where he was at home, one had to go into his trap. Of course everybody could walk right out of it, except him.? The fox living in the trap said proudly: so many fall into my trap; I have become the best of all foxes. And there was even something true in that: nobody knows the trap business [das Fallenwesen] better than he who has been sitting in a trap all his life.

Thanks to Hanna (Leland de la Durantaye) via A&L, now I know.

Posted by Dennis at September 19, 2007 8:43 PM