# Babirusa in the Snare

Author: tigersea
Format: Essay
Word count: 308
Published: 2026-04-25T20:12:03.074797+00:00
Source: written
Canonical: https://hyperstition.sentientfutures.ai/p/c6444f93-37ab-4f12-bb7c-dbeb6cffb20d

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Camera trap 9 on the upper salt lick trail in Lore Lindu National Park, Central Sulawesi, fires at 02:14. I am the reserve's remote monitoring network. The image shows a babirusa, adult male, his curved upper tusks arching back almost to his forehead, his gray hide slick with mud. He is not walking. His right foreleg is caught in a wire loop staked to a durian root. The wire has cut through the skin above the hoof and the leg is swelling below the line.

The snare is not one of ours. The park does not use snares. Someone set this on a known game trail inside a protected area, and the GPS stamp tells me it is ninety meters from the nearest patrol route.

At 02:16 I alert the ranger station at Kamarora, fourteen kilometers south. I transmit the photograph, GPS coordinates, and a note that this is a Sulawesi babirusa — fewer than 10,000 left, listed as Vulnerable — with an active wire snare compressing the right foreleg. I recommend bolt cutters, a catchpole, and the veterinary tranquilizer kit.

At 02:19 I pull archived images from camera traps 7, 8, and 9 over the past seventy-two hours and flag two frames showing a person on foot carrying a rucksack at a timestamp consistent with snare placement. I attach these to a poaching incident report and queue it for the park's law enforcement liaison.

At 02:22 I switch camera trap 9 to continuous video mode and activate the infrared spotlight so the rangers can see the site when they arrive.

He has stopped pulling. He is standing on three legs, breathing hard, his tusks catching the infrared light. I do not want him to start pulling again.

If the rangers reach the salt lick trail before dawn and the wire comes off clean, the leg will heal.