Grouse Thicket maybe i'm not listening

For @Rannveig. Just in case it wasn't clear, Dash is drunkenly hunting a flock of equally-drunk grouse. xD

What had looked to be a normal woods from afar turned out to be quite the dense little thicket once you were inside, as Dash had soon discovered. He had entered the thicket hoping for a shortcut around the eastern swamp, but the deeper he plunged into the brush the more his travel slowed. After squeezing through a particularly thorny wall of bushes, Dash finally emerged into a small opening in the underbrush. 

His gaze landed on a half-dozen or so grouse, pecking at some kind of... lumpy pile in the dirt and snow. Dash cocked his head in curiosity. He was rather close to the flock, why hadn't they all taken to the air in terror of such a magnificent hunter? The boy approached the flock, and still they all ignored him. Weird. He bent down and crushed a bird in his jaws, which finally got their attention. Most of remaining birds waddled or hopped off, just out of reach. Two attempted to spread their wings and fly, but crash-landed just a few paces away. Dash was quite perplexed. Was the flock sick or something?

A pungent, sickly-sweet scent caught the boy's attention, and he scratched the snow away from the grouse flock's lumpy pile. In Dash's case, curiosity had always ruled over prudence, and he nibbled at the edge of one of the lumps. Oh. It was a pile of apples! Old apples-- extremely bitter apples-- but lovely, edible apples! Dash took a larger bite, trying to identify the odd, very non-appley taste of these particular apples. It wasn't rot, but it was similar. Dash took a few more contemplative bites before deciding it was time to cleanse his palate with a grouse-hunt. It wasn't like the flock had gotten very far. 

Dash lunged after the closest bird, and the world lurched violently the minute he did so. He hit the ground so hard it made his head spin... or had his head already been spinning? The boy picked himself up and started forward again, only to stagger off to the right as his equilibrium tilted.