Thoreau was very chary of taking life, and was once known to carry some canker worms he had found in his bed-room down into the yard rather than throw them out the window, saying in reply to a remark on the subject that we knew not of what value they might really be in some subtle processes of nature. His peculiarity in this respect, combined with his habitual diffidence, once made him the hero of a ludicrous incident. Desiring to catch a woodchuck alive, without permitting the animal to injure itself in its frantic efforts to escape, he applied to a veteran trapper, a dissipated Nimrod and village hanger on for instruction.
       "Mr. W_____," he began, "is there any way to get woodchucks without trapping them with—"
       "Yes; shoot ’em, you ---- fool," replied the disreputable mentor, without waiting for the naturalist to complete the sentence.
       — Anonymous, in Kenneth Cameron, Emerson, Thoreau and Concord in Early Newspapers (Hartford: Transcendental, 1958), p. 86.