Its hard bones thrashing beneath the blanket frightened him. He yelled as its teeth found his knee. He swung his fist to dislodge it, for it was no more female to him than is a bitch fox in a trap. It was a fearful thing, outside his experience, and he moaned as he lay across it, plucking at the snare, staring at the blue, dirt-grained foot with broad yellow nails, until the noose widened and it tried to crawl beneath him like a tortoise. Then he bundled it up, it was no heavier than a whining bundle of sticks, and ran into his room, where, after carefully wrapping the snapping head, he bound the hands and feet and tied it by a sheet about its middle to the bed. After opening the window to clear the stench, he sat on its legs and, wincing each time it squawled, washed and disinfected its ankle. Whipping off the head rag so it could breathe more softly, he fled outside and watched it through the window. It was a bird cage and knife blades tightly wrapped in brown, scroflous skin, with little pools of sweat in the hollows and sticks for legs and arms. There was a purple, imperfectly healed tear above its navel. It was past puberty. Its present condition might be excused by fright, but he had a sickening suspicion it was not housebroken. Its huge deep eyes seemed to swallow him. When it shrieked, he jumped and retreated into the sunlight where he nursed his flask, muttering, "Six months, six months. Harry, what did I ever do to deserve this? Six months, just me and it." After he had pulled himself together, he marched inside, blanketed the head so it couldn't watch him, took a detergent, a rag and a bucket of water and began to scrub away layers of grease and filth. "Shut up," he yelled, "I don't like this either. One job I never asked for was attendant in a lunatic asylum." But he was wise enough to consider that until he trapped her from her own environment she was probably no more insane than a fox is insane. How she would adjust herself to her new life he did not know. Was it possible that with certain skills, if you didn't learn them young, you could never learn them? He welded a cage from pipe the Ventura settlers left and carried her out to it. Trying to ignore her screams, he bundled her in and welded the last two bars in place. After he dexterously freed her hands without being bitten, he was disappointed, for she seemed too stupid to untie her feet. The first time he tried to help her, he leaped away with blood streaming down his cheek; she had come within a half inch of taking his eye. When the breeze came up, he saw she bristled with cold. She shrank from the blanket he proffered. What did she do, burrow in the leaves? After pacing up and down and swearing to himself, he got a hammer and crowbar and pried a wall off his room. He dragged her cage inside and nailed the wall up again, while she shrieked and shook the bars so the little cage thumped on the floor.