Overture Downs and the desolate moorland below

The smell of a dead body was complex, consisted of many layers and differed from species to species. Nunataq had begun her lessons in scent discrimination between food sources in various stages of decay, when one of the adults had regurgitated half-digested mice for her first meat meal. It had reeked of digestive juices, hair and singed bones, quite suspicious and disgusting really, and very different from the sweet smell of milk, but there and then the important message was that not all food had to look nice and behold a lovely odour to be edible.

Over the hot days of summer her food had varied from fresh, to "going bad", to "mummifying", to "becoming putrid" and on one occasion "explosive". The latter had been an occasion, when she had accidentally come across a dead deer carcass, that had remained in the sun too long and had burst open. The stench of carrion gasses was overwhelming even for Nuna, who had got dizzy after spending time, picking up the innards that had been scattered in the grass. And for a few days after that her nose could simply not catch scent of anything else.

The most challenging sessions for the growing wolf were, when she detected a promising smell flowing in the air or coming from a yet unspecified source underground. On this day we found her working on the latter problem in the Overtire downs. When a wolf appeared on the horizon, she was deeply focused on scanning a particular square piece of ground, walking in circles, back and forth, trying to localize a scent that promised a possible meal. The molecules of that creature, who had died either in the underground caverns or been buried there, were scattered across the perimeter and she was very diligent and picking them all up and attempting to draw a cluster map in her mind.