He made a spring, inside the box, after the fowl. And just then something happened. There was a clicking noise behind the fox, and, all of a sudden, it got dark.
“This is queer!” thought Sharp Eyes. “That click sounded just like a trap, but I am not caught fast, as I was by my paw the other time. I feel no pain. Still maybe this is a trick. I guess I’d better go out again, and look around some more.”
He turned to go out, but found he could not. Behind him a door had sprung shut. Sharp Eyes was caught in the dark box with the rooster. The little fox was captured! He was in another kind of trap!
If you have ever been shut up in a dark closet, and could not open the door to get out, you can imagine how bad Sharp Eyes felt. Just as you may have done, he banged against the walls, and pushed against the door, but it would not open.
“Oh dear!” whimpered the fox. “This is terrible! Here I am caught in a trap again, and I said I’d be careful! I wonder how I can get out of here!”
Sharp Eyes looked about him. He saw that, surely enough, he was in a trap, though a different kind from the one that had hurt his foot, and had made him walk lame. This one did not pinch him. Then the fox looked at the rooster, whose crowing had brought him to the trap.
The rooster was not crowing now. I suppose he was too badly frightened at having the fox so near him. But when Sharp Eyes looked again he saw that he could not get the rooster, even though they were both in the trap.
For the rooster was in the back part, behind a screen of wire netting, and though Sharp Eyes had very keen teeth, they could not gnaw through wire.
“Anyhow, I don’t feel like eating a rooster now,” said the fox to himself. “I want to get out of here.”
Once more he looked around the trap in which he was caught. The fox did not know much about traps, but he could easily see that this one was not going to be easy to get out from. It was like a big box, open at one end, and it was through this open end that Sharp Eyes had walked in.
As soon as he was inside, the open end of the box closed with a wooden door, which snapped shut, just as might the door of a closet in which you had gone to play hide-and-go-seek.
Sharp Eyes pushed hard against this end door. He pushed against the sides of the box, and he pushed against the wire screen behind which the rooster stood. But the fox could not get out. Neither could the rooster, and the fowl fluttered about every time the fox moved, thinking, I suppose, that something dreadful was going to happen.