My wild - The White Wolf

My Wild - Part 3

I watched late into the night while my brother rested. The silver jaws began to loosen and I managed to pry them off without waking him. There was only one small problem, quite a large problem actually. We needed food; neither of us had eaten for at least five days and had both burned off most of our fat reserves. I barked at my brother to stay put until I returned and headed off in search of food. Let me just point out that I had never hunted before apart from when our mother was teaching us.

When I missed she would always go and fetch it for me and my prey were never bigger than a mouse or a vole. Eventually, my sensitive nose picked up something that made me yelp in joy. I smelled meat. It smelled like it had been dead for several hours so it might have been picked clean by other animals but I figured this might be my only chance to get food for my brother so I decided to check it out. As I headed in the direction of the meaty scent I smelt something dangerously familiar...humans. I considered turning back and then remembered Ezra alone in the den and quickened my pace. I ran and ran until I heard faint, deep voices like the ones that had passed by the den when I was younger. I crept by until I located where the food was. It was a small green triangle with flaps. Next to it there was a small light. It flickered and danced in the wind and whatever it was, it was masking the scent on the food. Although even with the strong scent of burning this was definitely where the food was and the smell was making my mouth water and my tummy rumble. 

I observed for a while to check that they didn't go near the food. They were sitting around another bigger flickering light, laughing and talking in a language I didn't understand. I snuck past them and into the food triangle where I saw the most food I had ever seen. There were deer and rabbit and some other meats that I didn't recognise. There were green and red things that smelt fresh like grass and big hunks of yellow stuff that had the distinct smell of milk. I grabbed the nearest hunk of meat and gobbled it down. I ate and ate until I couldn't eat any more and then I grabbed a large chunk and ran out into the open air. In my haste to get back to my brother, I was less careful and the humans noticed me. They started shouting and picked up big fire-sticks and pointed them at me. As I ran, the fire-sticks made loud bangs and the ground around me exploded as small oval things shot out of the fire-sticks and into the soft earth. The bangs were deafening and the smell burnt the back of my throat but I kept running until they gave up the chase. I finally got back to the den splattered with mud and shaking with fear. My brother was already out of the den when he heard my yelps. He hobbled over to inspect me. When he found no injury he looked up at me confused. I barked that I was fine and offered him the meat I had taken. He gobbled it up eagerly, and once he was satisfied, we buried the rest in our den for later. 

It had been about two weeks since I had gone to the humans to get the food and it was nearly all gone. I knew that at some point I would have to go and get more but I wasn't sure how. Going back to the human food den was out of the question but I didn't know how to hunt. My brother's wound was healing well and I had cleaned it every day for the past couple weeks so I was pretty happy with his recovery. He still rested for most of the day but he was starting to walk around the den a bit so I was confident he would be able to walk again.

As winter thawed into spring the snow melted away and the clouds let the sun's rays out of their dreary, grey prison. It was a lovely day and I decided that I was going to try my luck at hunting. I had watched my mother hunt outside our den when I was younger and was always fascinated at the way she taught me to catch mice. It had been the first thing our mother had taught us how to do, though we weren't very good at it. As my first hunting lesson, I thought it was fitting to do things I had done before to get the technique. I smelled out a mouse den and lay down a paw's length from the hole. I closed my eyes to slits as if I were sleeping and waited. Eventually, out popped a small nose, it twitched around and then it must have smelled me because it shot back into the hole. It did this a few times until it was sure I was asleep then it scampered out. As it came out into my reach I swatted at it with my paw and dragged it towards my waiting jaws.

It got away. I tried it many times at different mouse or vole holes until eventually I succeeded in catching a large vole. I trotted, head held high, back to my brother who was out of the den and sunbathing in a nearby patch of daisies. He lifted his head when he noticed me and limped over. I dropped the vole proudly at his feet and watched as he gratefully gobbled it up. I continued to hunt in this fashion every morning and it fed us well enough.