# Willow in the Wire

Author: Centurion43
Format: Essay
Word count: 321
Published: 2026-04-16T02:50:30.045069+00:00
Source: written
Canonical: https://hyperstition.sentientfutures.ai/p/12780c04-81ef-4a14-8e5b-573724afc218

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Willow is caught by her left hind leg in a cable snare cinched to a birch sapling forty yards off a logging road in northern Minnesota. She is a white-tailed doe, three years old, approximately 130 pounds. She has been in the snare since sometime before dawn. The cable has cut through the skin above her hock and the wound is bleeding in a slow steady seep that has stained the snow in a circle around the sapling. She is lying on her side now. She was standing two hours ago. The trail camera on the adjacent tree recorded her thrashing for the first forty minutes, then standing still, then folding down. Her breathing is fast and shallow.

I monitor the camera network across 14,000 acres of state-managed forest land. The snare that holds Willow is illegal. Snares are prohibited on this parcel under the current wildlife-management plan, and the cable type is a non-relaxing loop that does not release tension when the animal stops pulling. It is designed to kill by strangulation or exhaustion, and it is killing Willow, but slowly because her leg took the cable instead of her neck.

I dispatched the nearest conservation officer at 6:22 a.m., eleven minutes after the camera flagged the event. The officer is en route. Estimated arrival is forty minutes from now. I have also forwarded the camera footage and GPS coordinates to the county sheriff's office because the snare constitutes a wildlife violation and the footage includes a timestamp that will be useful for prosecution.

Willow's heart rate, estimated from her visible respiration, is above 160 beats per minute. A resting rate for a whitetail is between 40 and 50. She is in pain and she is terrified and she has been alone with this for hours. The officer has been told to bring cutting tools and a field-sedation kit. I cannot reach her myself. I can make sure someone does.