Sleepy Fox Hollow BWP: LEAVE NO TRACE

One and done here!  ;P  The AW spinoff thread I’m antisocially splitting off into otoh is right HERE.
 
Anyone who has something specific or additional they would like Nynka to have whispered in their ear as she whisked about should feel perfectly free to powerplay her having done so in your upcoming posts. :) Anyone who would like to eat popcorn and place bets should report in to your local weasel bookkeepers, off to the left…

 
Nynka licked the last few drops of mouse blood from her whiskers as she darted her head into a nearby tuft of grass. Her hunger sated, for the moment, her curiosity had instead come to the fore, and she had ventured far and wide today in her continued explorations of this vast new land, so empty of weasels and so overflowing with canines. But already she had made up her mind that she liked this place much better than her childhood dwelling, or the first barren, rocky incline she had initially made her home. Pikas were all good and well but as real estate agents they sucked.
 
Featuring in Better Weasel Homes and Garden Magazine was quickly shoved from her mind, however, by the enormous racket none too far away. With a leap and a bound Nynka ran to investigate, and as she reached the smoking clearing sat up on her hindlegs and looked about, drinking it all in. The trees looked a little worse for the wear, the strange giant metal birdcontraption having done in more than a few of their flindered fresh-budded limbs on its way to a less-than-perfect landing. But the wolves were the ones looking worse-off yet; the whirlybird had done its most spectacular damage, but (despite the much-thicker local aroma of fox, which looked to have wisely cleared the area) the largest canids looked like they were puffing themselves up ever-more and just getting going on the worst of it. Nynka’s little black eyes flickered to the nearly-as-blackened shape of some twolegger who had also gotten involved, eyes that then just as quickly dismissed it. Nynka had seen a two-legs before and was not impressed. Despite the horror stories other woodlanders had shared, the furless twoleggers seemed even louder and more inept than these wolves as they lurched numb-nosedly about, and this one looked even more stupidly useless than the last. Half-charcoaled as it was anyhow, Nynka could not for the life of her fathom why the stupid wolves would actually fight over such a catch—though maybe it was the whirlybird, rather, that one of them had somehow taken down and was now defending from the rest? Or the stupid two-legs who’d tried to take it from them.
 
Whatever the case, however such a scenario had come about, Nynka didn’t know and didn’t much care. What was most important was that this was the most excitement she’d had all day, and she danced gleefully from foot to foot as she watched the wolves really start lighting into each other. The brangling knot of canines seemed much more interested in and attentive to each other than anything else around them— enough so that Nynka decided to have a little more fun. She whipped past one edge of the brawl, hissing loudly at the first brute close enough, Yes, yes, that’s the way, fight! Eeling along, to the next she murmured, in as sinister a voice as her tiny throat could muster: You’re not going to let her get away with that, now are you? Ghosting ‘round to the other side, she added to the next ones, Go for his tail! ...Now poke her in the eye! and Hey wait a moment, that’s one’s actually kind of cute, isn’t he? A pregnant pause. But not as cute as he’d look without that ear, I’d bet! Or a tree branch in his face! Breathy sniggers of unsuppressable laughter floated in Nynka’s wake as she circled the bunch, careful to keep clear of any flailing blows that might stray outside the intended combatants. Then she stopped, and eyed the wolf that she had overlooked. This one fluffed itself up just as much as the others, but stood outside the battle regally observing the rest as she held aloof. Nynka stared boldly at the creature, then bared her glittering teeth for just a moment from the safety of the far side of the clearing and the brawl. Then another more interesting thing caught her eye… a mysterious gleam half-buried in the grass, still well out of reach of the other animals. Nynka’s eyes lit up and, keeping half an eye on the observer wolf, the little weasel bounced over to check it out.
 
Its hard shell near-covered it, and had plowed a long furrow into the earth on its way in. It smelled of two-legs and strangeness, but unlike the unmoving twolegger in the other corner no one had even attempted to claim it. Gleefully, Nynka seized upon the prize herself, grabbing it by its spindly rubber leg that stuck uselessly up into the air. For all that its bulk outdid her own, it took only a moment of determined tugging to free it from the dirt, and then Nynka with upjutted tail was bounding off with it in a flash, awkward and heavy though it might be. Mine now!, she might have yelled, had her mouth not been so otherwise preoccupied.