Chapter Thirty-Four: Semi-Automatic Trap

  To prevent the stored food from being stolen again, Wang Yang decided not to hesitate any longer, find a good spot and hide it.

  This idea has been around for a while, wanting everyone to realize that food storage is not enough, they have to go hungry once.

  If they had collected food with all their might and put it in a cave, they would not have felt the lack of food.

  The idea has been put off all along due to lack of a suitable location.

  What's more important is that Wang Yang basically didn't get enough food.

  The grasshopper gathered nuts and then slept by the wooden bucket for a night.

  The next day, at dawn, he carried a wooden bucket full of chestnuts on his back, with another hunting bucket on top, and set off on the road with bone thorns, wooden spears, and stone knives.

  They arrived at the dense forest of white bones and stopped, putting down the wooden bucket filled with chestnuts, ready to dig a hole.

  The reason for choosing here is that there are no animals nearby, and digging holes does not require looking around.

  Secondly, it is also because animals are scarce, and food can reduce the danger of being robbed by other animals.

  After putting down all his equipment, he brought a wooden bucket for making traps to eight meters away and tied up the skin strip before starting to dig a hole.

  Choosing to dig holes to hide food is also a helpless move, maybe a bit stupid, but under current conditions, there's no other choice.

  He grasped the stone knife with both hands, pushed aside the bones on the ground and started digging.

  In this era, there were no good digging tools, and Wang Yang had never thought of making a hoe. The stone knife was a relatively handy tool.

  It's called a stone knife, but it's actually just a slightly polished stone piece, one end flat and the other big, with the bigger end held in hand.

  The soil here is fertile, the geology is relatively soft and easy to dig. After half a day's work, a 70cm deep pit was finally completed. The wooden barrel was put in, but instead of filling it with soil immediately, they continued digging.

  After digging for about another hour, Wang Yang was exhausted, his hands and feet aching, his whole head covered in sweat. He looked at the wooden barrel trap eight meters away and let out a deep sigh.

  That trap didn't even have animals going in, desolate to the point of not looking like a forest.

  "It took me half a day to dig one pit, and I still have two more pits to go, so it'll take a total of one and a half days."

  "Staying here is equivalent to wasting a day and a half without collecting any food. Even if I take stimulants and dig the whole pit in one day, it's still a waste of a day."

  "I still have to go pick fruit, and that will take another day, and then I'll have to find a new source of food again, don't know how many more days..."

  "Judging from the temperature dropping lower and lower, it won't be more than a dozen days before it starts snowing. Where will we find food then?"

  Time was pressing, and no moment could be wasted, Wang Yang started thinking again.

  He looked in the direction of those dozens of fruit trees. Although there were many small animals there, if he went to dig a hole, no small animals would approach him.

  And behind is a mountain, in front is the primitive forest, digging a hole also needs to be vigilant around, greatly delaying the excavation efficiency, unreasonable.

  It's even more impossible here, can't even see a single bird.

  We have to think of a compromise.

  "It would be great if there was a fully automatic trap, like a mousetrap. A mouse just gets on it and gets caught. But doesn't this thing need a spring?"

  Wang Yang was deep in thought, suddenly his eyes lit up, and he stood up abruptly: "I've got it!"

  It is said that a desperate dog can jump over a wall, and a desperate rabbit will even bite people. This shows that everyone is being forced, and when they are forced to the limit, they will burst out with unprecedented abilities.

  Wang Yang was no exception, and he suddenly thought of a way to kill two birds with one stone.

  It is well known that, like mousetraps or the giant clamps lying in wait on TV, they cannot identify whether it is a living thing coming over; they are simply triggered by external forces.

  To put it bluntly, even if you throw a stone over there, it will be caught.

  So if you can use external force, why can't it be applied to a wooden barrel? No one has ever said that a mechanism must have a spring.

  After breaking free from the dead end of inert thinking, Wang Yang felt suddenly enlightened.

  He set up the wooden barrel trap, put fruit inside and muttered to himself: "The key to the barrel is two points, the small branches that support the weight of the barrel, and the fruit inside."

  "If other animals also knocked over the branch while taking that fruit, they would be caught in a wooden bucket."

  "So, how can we design it so that when the little animal gets the fruit, it will also knock down the branch? These two things are not connected at all... Ah? Connection?"

  Wang Yang patted his head and exclaimed with joy: "That's right! I won't let them connect if they're not connected!"

  He thought of this and picked up a branch from the side, cut one end flat and the other end sharp, then strung the fruit onto the sharp end.

  Then put the flat end on the connection between the wooden bucket and the supporting branch, using the pressure of the wooden bucket to make this stringed fruit branch hover horizontally, and this small mechanism is done.

  In this way, the fruit is associated with the supporting branch.

  As soon as the little animals went in, they would definitely touch the hanging fruit. As soon as they touched it, the branches moved. When the branches moved, the supporting force changed and the wooden barrel couldn't be held up anymore, so it came crashing down.

  "How could I have been so stupid? Too foolish, too foolish!"

  Wang Yang was in a great mood and quickly bent down to try it out. As soon as he moved, the fruit fell, and the branch broke off.

  He hastily ran under the dozens of fruit trees, finished afterwards, and ran back to the white bone forest, digging a hole with great vigor.

  After calculating the time, it was almost half an hour, and he ran over there.

  All I saw was a wooden bucket covering some small animal, which was struggling inside.

  Wang Yang observed his surroundings and saw no other animals lurking, so he rushed over, took out the wooden spear and stabbed randomly, resolving the battle in a minute.

  The wooden barrel was opened only after a piece of red paper was pasted on it.

  It was actually a pheasant!

  Wang Yang was extremely surprised and smacked his lips, learning for the first time that pheasants also eat fruit. He designed this to deal with small animals like moles and raccoons.

  Anyway, as long as it can be caught, it's fine.

  He quickly gathered up the pheasants and rearranged the traps before returning to the forest of white bones.

  Half an hour later, another small animal was caught.

  Open it and take a look, it's a fruit bat.

  He was delighted. He had long understood that the group of raccoons were not very willing, often wandering around nearby, reluctant to leave. Now it's fine, they've become his own food source.

  Put away and tidy up again.

  He went back again.

  Half an hour later, he came again.

  This time, no small animals were found on the hook. Looking down at the fruit inside, it was found to be intact and undamaged, probably because it had not yet caught the attention of small animals.

  Wang Yang didn't get discouraged after failing once and happily went back to continue digging the hole.

  This afternoon, Wang Yang kept running back and forth between two places, catching six small animals in a sporadic manner, which delighted him.

  With highly efficient tools, a large amount of food can be harvested, it shouldn't be difficult.

  Everyone's suggestions are really great, which inspired me a lot and broadened my horizons, helping me so much. Thank you!