When I worked on Cactus Island, I was not only issued a Leatherman, I was given a pair of leather gloves.
“What are these for?” I naively asked.
“You’ll see,” said my boss.
For this job, we live-trapped feral cats. Occasionally, we’d catch an Island fox. When we caught our first fox, our boss put on his gloves, made a fist and stuck his hand in the trap. Though the fox opened his mouth to bite him, the fox’s mouth was too small to get around his fist. My boss grabbed the fox by the scruff of the neck and pulled it out of the trap. Then he set it in his lap on its back. He kept the fox still with one hand pressing lightly around its neck. The fox just laid there and let us check it over before we released it. Easy.
“Don’t worry if it tries to bite you,” he said as I prepared to pull my first fox out of a trap. “Its mouth isn’t big and his teeth aren’t sharp enough to get through the gloves.”
“Okay,” I said, then stuck my fist into the trap. Sure enough the fox snapped at me, but I held steady. I’d watch my boss do it, and he said the gloves would protect me. I had complete faith.
Idiot.
Sure enough, the fox got his mouth around my much smaller fist with no problem. Then it sunk its tiny teeth through the glove into my flesh.
“Ow!” I pulled my hand out of the trap and ripped off my glove. Blood flowed out of several tooth marks. I shot an angry look at my boss.
He simply laughed. “Yeah…I might’ve lied about them not being able to bite through the glove.”
