Black Morass Better than iced tea

Dawn found the Zale skidding rather precariously down a steep scree slope. He'd actually been trying to follow the trail of a roe buck but it seemed nature had devised a far more interesting plan of action when, in a brief flurry of motion, the ground had been moving beneath him. In all honesty, the details of what had happened became less and less interesting the further down he slid and, by the time he reached the valley floor, he'd forgotten all about the real cause.

He was sitting in the shade of a tall pine, now, with one paw dabbling and making slight splashes in a small puddle of swamp water. It was quite nice here, he decided, idyllic and almost too quiet. Zale was not one to throw away a calm morning, however boredom was surely soon to set in at some point and turn his recline into a nest of restless ants. He was so lost in the serenity of it all that his absent mind payed no attention to his forelimb exiting the water and drawing nearer his muzzle. That was until the taste hit him. Just the thought of vile liquid on a clean tongue made his stomach churn, and so it came to no onlookers' surprise that the real thing was so gut-wrenchingly bad it had him leap up and recoil a good few paces before he sat down and began to perform an odd performance of the tongue in a lame attempt to rid himself of the taste.