Ghost Lion Crag And the farmers are losing their focus

After having crossed the frozen river which separated his pack's claimed lands and the mountain ranges, Bronco found himself meandering along in the foothills which he hadn't ever spent much time investigating, only to find with some curiosity that where the hillside was down to only a few inches of snow, there were holes in the ground. Something had been coming and going from those small holes, and he sniffed and scratched at a couple of them, noting that it must be some kind of small rodent that inhabited the rocky, hole-infested, hillside, until he finally saw one of them. 

The creature was larger than a mouse, but smaller than a rabbit, and from what he could tell, it was some kind of small groundhog...But from what he knew, groundhogs were fairly solitary...At least, the larger ones were. Bronco had grown up in marshy, boggy, forested lands where prairie dogs and pika did not stray- but here, they found themselves at home. At the sight of him, they ducked back down inside their burrows before Bronco even got a running start to surprise them- and his digging did nothing, considering how frozen the rocky earth was. So he roved from tunnel to tunnel, sniffing here and there, and occasionally doing his best to sneak and snatch one of the pesky little creatures- but found that his technique wasn't helping him very much.

When Wraen had set out to Moonspear so soon after her freak-accident, she had over-estimated her status of health and the actual distance she could walk. It had taken her a day and a half to get to the glen and it took her twice as more time to return. Once the injured foot had ached so badly that she had been forced to take a full night's rest at the Sentinels and should have taken another one were it not for home-sickness. She was so close to Firebirds and yet they still were out of reach.

So - long story short - that's, how Wraen found herself in Ghost Lion Crag to see the familiar form of Bronco and feel actually glad to meet him there. "Hey!" she greeted him from afar and hobbled as quickly as possible towards him. "Watcha doing?" she scanned the ground curiously, but did not immediately see the object of her packmate's interest.

Like a frustrated child, Bronco huffed at the little creatures which constantly evaded him by ducking back into their tunnel systems. He'd lay in wait, but they would avoid that tunnel, and pop out of another one several metres at least away, which was too far for him to bound in one leap from a standstill. When he heard a voice, he looked up, and was glad to see hiw Sovereign on her way toward him, so he greeted her with a smile and a waving tail. Good- Wraen had shown knowledge about hunting small creatures before, maybe he could get more advice from her now. 

"Huntin' varmints," He said, gazing down at one of the small tunnels near his feet. "But I can't catch 'em. They just go into their tunnels so fast, an' there's so many tunnels, I never know where they're gonna pop out next." He said. "Is there any cheat method of hunting these things?" He asked.

"A pika!" Wraen exclaimed happily and came closer to investigate the tunnel Bronco had pointed out to her. As with most lagomorphs their scent was faint and blended perfectly with the spectrum of smells in their surroundings. The warmth and the small puffs of CO2 were two things that gave their presence away. 

"Oh, they are definitely here and..." she closed her eyes and listened intently for a moment or two, "... more than one. Plenty. They have a huge tunnel system under the ground, so I have no better advice to you than to be very patient, attentive and quick. They are not easy to catch."

"Ah whut?" Bronco asked, with a snort. Pika was a new word to him- and in the same way that Samantha had somehow seemed so new that it was ridiculous, 'Pika' had a sort of funny sound to it that also sort of made sense. They were cute little creatures- with byg, black eyes, and they popped in and out of their burrows with comical speed. Wraen knew what she was dealing with, though, and advised that they be patient...Though that didn't bode well with Bronco, who wanted to catch and eat a pika now.

"Hmm," he said, meandering from one burrow entrance to the next. "But what if," He said, and he began to scuff at the frozen earth around one of the burrow entrances. Their burrows would be far too deep and long for him to ever dig one out...But that did leave an alternative. "What if...'Cause they can like...Duck back into their burrows like...The second they see us...But what if we covered the burrows up?" He asked. "If we covered them up, then like...As soon as one starts to dig out, we'll see it first, an' can creep up before it completely clears the tunnel entrance...D'you think that'd work?" He asked.

"A good one, but, when I say tunnels, I mean," Wraen turned and beckoned to the whole perimeter of the area they were standing in, "thousands of little holes to peek out and hide again. They are not like us - their dens do not have just one enterance."

"Though we could try flushing them out - say, one digs here and the other watches, whether the animal will show themselves above the ground," she suggested. "But - I guess the earth might be a bit too tough to dig - did you try?"

Bronco was impressed- and it showed. He patiently listened to what Wraen had to say about the underground habits of the small creatures, but wasn't dissuaded from finding a method to catch at least one of them- perhaps more for sport and practice than anything else. She pointed out that there might be thousands of tunnels, and entrances- and to tell the truth, the hillside was pocketed with little pike holes. But he wasn't too dissuaded. The hillside was also covered in snow and rocks, and he championed himself as an excellent digger. 

"See, I don't think I need to dig, so much; ground's frozen anyway." He said, scratching at it with one front foot, his black claws barely even making scratchmarks on the earth. "But there's lotsa snow, an' rocks, an'-" He said, and with just a few scuffs of his front feet, he filled the nearest burrow entrance with a couple inches of snow and small rocks. "So f'I keep fillin' 'em in," He said, moving to another burrow- and then on to another, "An' you stay there...Eventually, one'll prolly try to escape." He said. "An' as soon as you see 'em startin' to dig through the snow, pounce 'em!" He said, enthusiastically moving from one tunnel entrance to the next, kicking a bit of snow inside and patting it down gently, just enough so that the creatures would have a couple inches of snow to dig through to get out- but that movement could be spotted from several feet away, giving the wolves a warning as to which burrow entrance to attack.

Wraen smiled albeit a little slyly, but did not point out that pikas did not necessarily have to leave their homes for Bronco to catch them. They could wait until he was gone. But - let the boy try out his plan - she lied down by one of the freshly covered tunnel entrances and divided her attention between watching it and seeing Niamh's son work very diligently. She believed that there was little point in doing, what he had planned, because there was too much "assumptions" and too less facts involved. 

At one point, however, her attention was drawn to a movement in the snow far off from, where Bronco was working. For a moment there she wondered, if she should alert him, but decided not to disturb him and went quietly away to do some investigation. Instead of pika, she spotted the black tipped ears of a snowshoe hare. The moment it knew that it had been spotted, it ran and Wraen went after it.

Bronco's plan had the greatest of intentions- but as he meandered along, filling in the many tunnel entrances, he began to realize just how many there were- and that there was likely no way he would be able to fill enough that the creatures would then notice, and start to dig their way out. They knew a predator was nearby, and had enough sense to sit tight, for the most part, save for a few who managed to nudge the snow aside enough to create another entrance while the dogged wolf was off filling in other tunnel entrances. Once he began to realize how futile his attempt was, he turned to ask Wraen to help him, rather than staying in wait- but when he turned to address her, her attention was drawn elsewhere with a keen, hunter-like focus. As soon as Bronco saw what she'd spotted, she took off after it. Having trundled his way along the mountainside, he was now too far to be of any help, so he simply let her run off in hopes of catching a better meal for herself. 

He did turn and began making his way back toward where he'd begun, and quickly learnt the error of his ways. Having covered the tunnel entrances with snow, the entire area all looked dishevelled and no longer pocketed by dark tunnel entrances. He picked up a trot, with hopes of catching a better view of Wraen's hunt- when he stepped straight into one of the tunnels he'd previously filled in, and went up to his elbow into the tunnel, bringing him to a halt so abruptly that he slammed his chin on the ground. Growling softly to himself, he pulled his front leg out of the pika's tunnel entrance- at least a bit grateful that any pikas in that area hadn't seen fit to nip at his toes while his foot had been in their living space- and tested his weight on it. He hadn't been trotting too fast when he'd suddenly been tripped up, but his forward momentum had been just enough that he'd wrenched his foreleg a bit with his fall. He grimaced slightly, and rubbed his muzzle along the front of his leg to assess the damage. 

No blood, no breaking- but there was a good three or four inch area between his shoulder and his knee that was sore to the touch, likely bruised fairly badly beneath the skin. The muscles were slightly strained and complained lightly when he began to walk again, so he hadn't been very badly hurt- but he realized, then, that he could have been. Had he taken off running after Wraen, and had he stepped into a tunnel then...He easily could have broken his leg. 

He had a short 'well shit' moment when he realized the danger of the situation he'd created, and began scuffing the ground with his hind feet, kicking snow everywhere and scraping dirt over the snow as well, as a warning to any who passed that way- gopher holes of any kind could actually be dangerous. Lesson learned.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gGludGaPKag - I could watch this all day long.

As per BBC short and educational video - snowshoe hares are easy to spot, but not nearly as easy to catch. Wraen realized her mistake in not alerting Bronco as soon as the hare gained speed and after her first attempt to tackle it, change it's course of run abruptly. Though small and quick, the Sovereign was unable to manouvre just as effectively and after some more such dance moves the lagomorph had increased the distance between itself and it's would-be-killer.

The snow got deeper suddenly and, where the light-weight fellow loped effortlessly on the surface, there Wraen sank chest deep every time she sprang and it did not take her long to tire out completely. You can try very hard and try again and again, but there comes a point, when it's wiser to give up. Wraen stopped at the "very", watched the hare disappear in the trees and returned to Bronco.

Who had stopped covering the holes and was doing something entirely incomprehensible to her. She came closer, attempted to draw conclusions from silent observation, but eventually drew near and spoke to him: "Watcha doing now?"

When Wraen returned, it was without a hare, so he felt lightly disappointed that neither of them had had a successful hunt. She did bear a puzzled expression, and considering the fact he was just messing about, scuffing up the ground, she had every right to be confused. 

" So I kinda stepped in one of the holes I covered up, an' nearly broke my leg," He admitted with a sheepish smile. Of course, he was exaggerating, but that much was obvious given the fact that he had no limp. "Figured I oughta at least make it obvious that anyone else passin' through needs to watch their footing in case they nearly do the same thing. Just bein' a friendly neighbour, or somethin'" he laughed.

"Okay," Wraen replied, cast her glance around and thought that in reality there was more mess than before and it was even more difficult to see, where the holes in the ground were, now that they were covered in a thick mix of sand and snow. Bu-u-u-u-t she was not going to argue, because this did look like a good trap for anyone, who was not careful enough to watch the ground under their feet. 

"Are you good to run?" she asked, when she thought that Bronco had had enough fun for today. "We could go and see another hare. It should be easier for two of us to hunt it."

Once he considered that his work was done, Bronco huffed softly, contentedly, glad that he could have just potentially saved someone from snapping their leg in half if they'd been running fast enough. Wraen suggested that they continue looking for something to eat, and he agreed happily with a chuff, his tail waving side to side with enthusiasm. "Rabbit for lunch sounds good to me," He said. "Why don't we try further down the slope?" He volunteered, before the two went off in search of easier prey.