Прыгоды з жыцця прыроды
Adventures from the life of nature
Вячаслаў Грамыка
Для сярэдняга школьнага ўзросту
Выдавец: Беларусь
Памер: 263с.
Мінск 2003
Only when the she-wolf was being taken out of the trap they noticed that the second trap had worked, but the old wolf took extreme measures. After having examined all around it was possible to find out what had happened here at night.
The she-wolf must have been trapped first and soon died. The wolf, who got to know that his companion was lost forever, tried to set free his wolf cubs. For a long time he had been wandering round the hammock, because the grass there was all
trampled down. He tried to break the net with his fangs and in some places he almost succeeded, but having forgotten about his caution he touched the bended arc with his paw. Having realized at once what had happened he tried to snatch it out cf the trap and only some fraction of a second didn't allow him to do it. The arcs closed with a snap capturing his paw at the foot, thus trapping all the four finger-cushions.
The wolf circled round for a long time trying to find some way out, but in vain. He pulled the trap after him, leaned his paws against it, gnawed it in fury hurting his gums to bleeding.
Apparently, the night passed in that way and when the wolf heard men approach, he gnawed the trapped paw through and ran away.
The wolf cubs were first taken to the farmstead and then passed over to the local zoo. What happened to the old wolf nobody knew. He would hardly manage to get back to this lair, besides nobody had time to look for him.
Summer days passed by quickly. The haymaking time came, so that was a busy time for everyone. While the weather kept sunny it was necessary to hurry up to gather in the harvest in time. Summer harvest time passed and autumn days were as busy as summer ones.
Everyone was too busy to recall the old wolf. Domestic animals pastured peacefully in the fields. There was no threat of capacious raids and actually the old wolf seemed to have moved to some other place. But when the first snow covered the ground, the old wolf appeared again. Many people saw his lonely track with a stump of the right paw. Only this wolf didn't attack anyone yet, wandering round and everybody called him the Lame now.
When the snow carpet became deep and very frosty weather set in, wolf raids renewed. The poultry of the neighbor hunter fell a prey to such raids at the beginning of winter. Three days later a year-old goat from the utmost village house disappeared and one day the Lame even made an attempt to attack a farmer who was coming back late from the village. The farmer managed to escape only because he had matches. Whenever the wolf came nearer, he struck a match and the wolf retreated. It repeated
many times and the Lame followed the man up to the very farmstead. It was good for the farmer that he had enough matches and as soon as the deadly frightened man caught at a stick, the Lame immediately disappeared as if dissolving in the darkness.
Something ought to be done to do away with this predator.
Several times hunters tried to trace the Lame with the help of dogs. There were several good hounds in the village but the wolf still excelled them in speed and left the hunters no chance to catch him. The farmers tried to attract the wolf to carrion. Several times the hunters laid out the intestines of dead domestic animals and slaughtered pigs near the forest. The wolf eagerly came there, but neither the traps set there nor ambushes set by the hunters worked. The Lame always avoided the traps, ate the meat and disappeared back in the forest. And when the hunters made an ambush at night he never failed to feel it and never came there. But as soon as the hunters had a break for a night, the wolf was there at once and ate the lure.
One of the hunters came to my father and invited him to go to Kuzmich to ask him for help.
Father seldom refused to help anyone, so he agreed to go at once. Besides, he was worried about our domestic animals.
Kuzmich couldn't come with them. He was badly ill and almost all the time lied on his Russian stove. Only when somebody came to visit him he would come down from the stove with difficulty, sit for half an hour at the table and then get back.
Nevertheless, Kuzmich gave them some pieces of advice and also some odorous lure and several pills of strychnine. The pills were prepared so that when one bit through them, there created some dry powder, like dust, inside. Kuzmich believed that only with the help of these pills the beast could be killed.
As they went to the old man together, they decided to act on together. The carrion was found in the stud-farm and they brought it to the forest on that very day, but before that they gave the carrion to dogs to eat a bit, because it was the old hunter's advice: wolves always took the lure better if it had been taken by some other animals — foxes, dogs and even magpies or crows.
The pills were put in rather small pieces of meat, which then were thrown on the ripped entrails. And to make the wolf take these pieces first they used the odorous lure given by Kuzmich.
He made the lure himself and cften used it. Every time when he slaughtered a pig before Christmas he always left a part of its liver and lungs for this purpose. He cut the entrails into very small pieces and put them into a glass jar, then he added 3 — 5 grams of anise per liter. After that the tightly sealed jar was kept on the windowsill until the mixture disintegrated under the influence of winter sunrays, though not very frequent but hot.
This time, it was also of great help. In order not to make the beast suspicious the ripped entrails were sprinkled with the mixture in some places, but the pieces with strychnine were sprinkled more intensively. And to attract to the carrion magpies and other birds (which would make the wolf think that there was no danger) they scattered over some handfuls of odorous sprinkled barley.
The Lame came to the lure on the second night, and it didn't fail.
As it was expected the wolf took one of the pieces stuffed with strychnine at once, but feeling that something was wrong, or maybe having bitten through the pill in his mouth, he began to belch the food. The beast became weak with thick spume, which secreted even after half a day freezing on the snow.
It was difficult to suppose what it would finish with, most likely the beast would die.
Days and weeks passed. The winter came to an end, but nobody happened to see the track of the Lame and actually there were no tracks of wolves in the neighborhood at all.
It became clear that the old lame beast found his death somewhere in the thick of the forest.
Three years passed, there were many changes, many new things and peculiarities came into life and also changed the way of life in the farmstead. If compared with previous years there weren't so many apparent changes, although there were some differences. One farmer built a new house, another became richer and one more lost some of his property. People didn't think about the Lame anymore, but he appeared all of a sudden.
He appeared at the moment when nobody believed that he was still alive.
First his tracks were spotted, though nobody believed it. But his tracks appeared now and again and it was impossible to mix them up with any other beast. It meant that people would have to await something worse and that happened soon.
In no time his raids began and they were unexpected and ruthless. During this rather long period the Lame didn't get a new family because he had no pack and always acted alone, as before. Why it was so, it was difficult or even impossible to guess. No doubt during the long period he could have found a companion.
The first who suffered were farmers of the remote Slowtcha. Their five farmsteads were situated amongst the forest. Within one night only the Lame visited two cattle-sheds. He got into the first one through the roof, the way he used to do it before, and the second time he managed to wring out the door which was not perfectly closed. At dawn, one could clearly see the imprints of his tracks with that peculiar characteristic mark of his stump. Having achieved his aim the wolf went to his lair.
But some absolutely unreasonable peculiarities were characteristic of his latest raid. In the first pigsty he strangled a fat piglet. The thought that he didn't like the taste of it, was absurd, but nevertheless the piglet was not touched, only the ears and tail were half bitten off. The whole carcass was untouched. The wolf only crumpled the piglet out but not cut its throat with his fangs.
In the second shed similar things occurred. The Lame killed almost all of the hens, but they remained untouched. Only one very young hen disappeared.
In the morning the farmers tried to examine the tracks. After walking about a kilometer they saw the spot where the wolf had dealt with the hen. It was evident that it had taken him much time. The ground covered with snow was all trampled down. The wolf pulled the hen in the snow for a long time, taking a firm stand on the snow, and there were imprinted marks even on the unbroken snowy carpet.
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It looked as if he didn't try to bite through it, but to tear it to pieces with his paws. And there was nothing left of the hen, he ate it with feathers and feet. Only a few big feathers remained lying cn the snow; perhaps, he had plucked them preparing to eat the hen.
When the farmers began to protect their domestic animals more carefully, to close all the doors and unchain the dogs, the latter became his victims themselves.
Two young and inexperienced mongrels were killed in the yards where they were guarding. It didn't take the wolf much time. While some master was getting dressed and armed with something like an ax, and then ran out into the yard, the dog was dead. When a man appeared the wolf wouldn't run away, he only stepped aside and looked impudently not hurrying away as if he knew perfectly well that to fight him with such arms was ridiculous.
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