Hearthwood River red squirrels are one of the most carnivorous squirrels

Otter shot up the furrowed trunk of a stately redwood. His nails dug in and audibly scraped and pulled at the bark as his hind feet kicked off the ground to propel him upward. His jaws snapped down but for all the power of his jump and the reach of his teeth, all he seized were a half dozen strands of long ginger hair. The brown and black wolf touched back down on the ground as soft and silent as a cat. His tail beating back and forth as he stared up.  

On a sturdy branch a tail's length above where his jaws had closed sat his quarry. The squirrel took a moment to catch its breath. Its beady black eyes could be stretched open no further. Then realizing it had escaped unscathed it craned its neck to peer down at him and trill a brazen note of triumph and warning. It even dared to climb head first back down the trunk a ways to taunt and goad him with high pitched chirps and a twitching tail.

"Hah," grinned Otter. "You win this round. But I know where you live." He knew it was futile and yet the river's newest subordinate could not resist another lunge up the tree for the fun of it. The squirrel, still a bit shaken and not entirely confident in its safety, scurried back to the branch to sling its insults from where it knew with certainty it could not be reached.

Otter turned his back to it and searched the trees for his next source of entertainment.

Hmmmm.

The sun was warm on his dark back as he slowly picked his way among the towering redwoods. His destination was Inna's whelping den, as it so often was, and yet the Attaya took his time. His steps were slow, measured against relaxed breaths rather than any urgent tempo. The Hearthwood pack had endured a great deal of rain the past week, enough to keep Mace far away from the titular river after watching it swell and break its banks. For him, sunlight was a reprieve from dark memories, and it would be a shame to waste it.

It was a scrabbling sound, like teeth on wood, that drew him to Otter's location. At first he thought nothing of it, but with his mind easily drawn to darker thoughts, he imagined a black bear clawing its way into the canopy. Soon enough the would-be guardian was heading directly for the sound, intent on chasing any threat from his home. His hackles rose as he pushed his shoulders forward and prepared himself for a scuffle. The scene he barged in on was not what he expected.

He spotted the mottled brown wolf just as he was landing, but was too far away to hear Otter's challenging taunt to whatever caught his interest in the trees. Immediately, Mace made assumptions. Otter must have found the black bear first and was hovering at the base of the tree, looking for a way to frighten it away. With a soft growl, Mace made himself known and pushed into the vicinity. He craned his neck to peer up the long trunk. Strangely, he couldn't see anything resembling a bear, but he knew how small they could make themselves up there. No doubt it was hiding out.

How big was it? he wondered aloud with a sidelong glance to his superior. Not once did he ever stop to think the scenario he'd devised in his head wasn't quite the real deal.

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The squirrel grew silent. It was perched in the crook between the limb and the trunk of the tree, its tail following the arch of its spine before curling away from its skull, and its forepaws tucked to its chest. Its red-brown coat made it near indistinguishable from the rest of the tree as it waited for the predator to take its leave so it could continue foraging or chasing mates. But Otter lingered, for he was in no hurry, as he seldom ever was. Unfortunately for the rodent, another carnivore soon arrived.

Not one to be wary, Otter almost missed the soft growl that preceded the emergence of a packmate from the timber. His ears cupped forward as he looked to this older and larger male with interest. "How big was it?" his companion wondered, and Otter answered with a smile and an amiable swish of his tail. "Oh about the size of your snout. Just a mouthful." He took note then of the other wolf's stance. He seemed a bit... defensive? Otter could not put a paw on what it was he was picking up on and he tipped his head to the side. He certainly had no idea that his burlier packmate thought there was a bear in the tree.

"Don't like them?" He chuckled. "They are a bit of a nuisance sometimes I guess. Not bad eating though if you can catch them." Otter paused for a beat, long enough to think up something fun to do. Or at least something fun for Otter to do. "I was going to leave this one be seeing as he's outta reach. I scared him good so I don't think he'll come down anytime soon. But if you're game, we can go find another one to chase around. If we catch it, I'll make you a deal — I just want the tail. You can have everything else. How's that sound?"

The subordinate grinned toothily, his tail wagging fast with expectation.

There is a deer that was killed by a lynx nearby. +10 Health

He first thought it was a figure of speech, and quelled the desire to fix his newfound companion with a queer look. The size of your snout might not be as literal as saying as blue as the sky, he supposed, and so he let that first hint slide. He bobbed his head as the wolf went on, but the longer Otter spoke, the more Mace's brows pulled together and the slacker his jaw grew, until he was outright staring at the brown-and-cream wolf with a purely baffled expression.

Okay, so he might have believed the part about eating a bear. Mace had never tried bear, being strangely turned off the thought of eating meat from another predator. He might have believed the part about Otter frightening it up a tree. Black bears were notoriously easy to spook in spite of their relative size, and Mace had seen them flee rather than fight before. What he didn't believe overly much was Otter's enthusiasm for chasing bears, nor the request for just the tail. Who the fuck eats just the tail? A bear's tail, of all things, probably only had a blob of meat the size of his tooth.

It was at this point that Mace collected himself, parted his lips to speak, clamped them shut again, shook his head, and pinned back his ears. What the heck are you even talking about? Because surely Otter wasn't talking about the bear, right? And if he wasn't talking about the bear, which Mace was still convinced was in the tree, then he didn't much care what Otter was up to. He would swiftly redirect the man's attention.

(This post was last modified: Jun 17, 2017, 10:01 PM by Mace.)

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In terms of meat and of sustenance the tail had none. It was however abundant in soft plush furs and it was this feature that Otter was interested in. But not for himself — what grown wolf would have need of such a small amount of fur? The hide of a larger animal could line a den but it would take far too much effort to collect enough small tails to serve the same purpose. No, Otter wanted the tail for a wolf far smaller than he. He wanted the tail for one of the pups. It was a perfect play thing.

He was expecting of course that this dark fellow would be most agreeable to his offer. He was not expecting there to be such a sharp breakdown of communication. His own ears flicked back and a single brow lifted in perplexion. "Um," his mouth quirked to the side. "The... squirrel..." Otter swung his snout to gesture up the tree to where the rodent still bided its time, but his confused and searching gaze never left the other wolf. What the heck did he think Otter was talking about?

"I think we are on different trails here," he commented with a short laugh. He tried to clear up the confusion, however it got to be there in the first place. "Hi. I am Otter. I chased a squirrel up this tree and I think we should go chase squirrels together."

Even as the words left his mouth he knew they sounded like a strange sort of romantic proposition. But the subordinate did not care. He grinned toothily and wagged his tail in a quick and bouncy rhythm. 

Though typically good-natured, Mace felt his face ripple with telltale creases of irritation when Otter cleared up the confusion. It turned out there was no bear, only a treed squirrel. Then what made that god awful noise? he had to wonder to himself, and he very nearly voiced this question, but Otter was speaking again, and Mace felt his resolve crack.

Mace would have been happy to follow along five minutes ago, but to preserve his pride, the Attaya refused to admit that he'd somehow been mistaken. Instead, he unfairly redirected his frustration at Otter, who seemed more like a child than a superior with his desire to chase squirrels up trees. That wasn't Mace's way, though, so how could he understand the merit? I heard claws on wood, said the Attaya in a voice dangerously edged with a barely concealed growl, sounded like a bear climbing. You mean to tell me that was just a squirrel? Because even if the commotion was over just a squirrel, he refused to believe that a rodent that small could make noise enough to alarm him.

Something, somewhere, had been scrabbling on wood and set Mace on edge. Whether it was a bear or a squirrel or some other climber, he was determined to know, so he could at least go about his day and continue to do far more important things than whatever this was. As for chasing squirrels, well, his set face was probably all the answer Otter needed.

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"That or me." He answered. Despite the near rumble he detected in the other male's statement, Otter continued to grin and wag his tail. Even if in the back of his mind he was wondering what's with this guy. The mottled brown wolf was quick to assume the big lad was just nervous about bears for some reason. Perhaps he had a bad experience or two. Otter's experiences had been that bears mostly bothered bears but, they were damn well big enough to bother wolves too.

"It was probably me. Look." Otter dug his nails in the dirt and propelled himself toward the sturdy trunk of the tree the squirrel was in. He demonstrated what he had been doing moments before Mace arrived — he bunched the muscles in his hindquarters and leaped, scrabbling at the bark for what little purchase could be had to reach as high as he could. Landing smoothly with all four feet on the ground, he looked back to Mace and cocked his head.

"Is that what you heard?"