Fantasy RPG Forum - Standing Trials

18 Ashan 720

The site was a sodden mound of partly-melted slush, just taller than Oram’s head. Oram reckoned that most of the snow had slipped off of the overhanging rock mere trials before; had he returned to reestablish his hunting camp here a mere tentrial earlier, he might very well now be trapped behind that cold, wet, heavy mass himself, if not buried beneath it. The ongoing issues with Ornot’s multi-colored hair, however, had ruled out his setting out before the weather got warm enough for his shorn goat to safely face the elements again. Apparently, the bizarre event had not only made Oram some extra cash, it had saved his life.

Looking up at the overhang, Oram figured that all the snow and ice that would fall from it had already fallen. He was not about to waste time, however, digging out his old campsite; he would find another one instead. With the weather warmer now, the hunter would not need to find more shelter from the elements than his own tentage would provide; any suitably dry, level site that was manageably close to the creek would do.

He spent the next break or so picking such a site, checking the ground to make sure that it was soft enough to accomodate his tent stakes, while still firm enough to hold them once they were in. He checked the area for fresh anthills and other things that might plague a carelessly-chosen camp; satisfied there were none, he took out his hatchet and a bag of stakes, and began measuring out and placing the latter, hammering them part-way in with the poll of the former.

After a while he paused, sat down on a rock, and regarded the site. Mule shuffled and started to snuffle questioningly at the ground. Looking for something to graze, Oram realized. And without much success: the grass had only just started to grow.

Oram watched grinned; it amused him that Mule didn’t realize that the snack he was looking for was on his own back. The traveler didn’t let it go on too long, though; after a few moments he rose from his rock and went over to the mule to retrieve the sack. It contained his lunch, too, and he was starting to get hungry himself. Opening the sack, he pulled out an apple and offered it to Mule. The animal’s ears flicked and its nostrils flared at the sight of it. Oram dropped it on the ground in front of Mule and then went back to his rock with the sack, from which he pulled out a sandwich and a second apple.

As he ate, he planned out the next trial or so. Before he left here, he would make a fire pit and gather some wood, whittle and put in some poles for a makeshift pen for his goats. Then he would go home and finish his preparations. First thing in the morning he would return with his animals and all of his kit to finish setting up his hunting camp.

——

Oram stood next to Mule and glared at the torn sack as Ornot poked at it. The hunter had left it at the site when he returned home the trial before, forgetting that there had been a second sandwich in it. It was a rare lapse, and while the loss of a bag and a forgotten snack were no more than a mild incovenience, it did mean he had attracted some sort of unwanted animal attention to his campsite, attention that might return.

Ornot looked up at him from the shredded sack, a strip of burlap hanging from his mouth. After a moment he dropped it, then began searching the ground for a decent growth of grass, much like Mule had the trial before. Oram continued to look at the burlap. What would have shredded the bag like that so completely? he wondered. Even eaten part of it? He had a guess. And if his guess were correct, his vermin problem might actually turn out to be an opportunity.

Oram spiraled carefully outward from the campsite, looking for likely burrows. He had guessed that he was looking for mole rats; they were the most likely local animals he could think of that were both destructive enough to completely shred his bag and small enough to not leave more conspicuous traces of there presence. He had no sooner spotted a likely burrow that he heard a sound close behind him.

The hunter looked back to see Ornot gazing back at him; the goat had followed him, wanting to see what he was doing. He gave Ornot an annoyed grunt and scooted him back to camp. He would have to secure the animals somewhere apart from where he was trapping, he realized.

After tying Ornot to a tree and leaving him a snack, he went back to find the burrow he had located earlier. He found it more quickly than he expected, then after a moment realized that he had actually found a second hole. Mole rat burrows were a good size, and the animals didn’t like to cover them, but they tended to come out in places where they could only be seen from head-on. That could be used against them, the trapper thought; it meant they would come and go in one direction, something like a rabbit run.

Oram couldn’t remember seeing mole rats out in the open much, so he guessed they wouldn’t walk around on land far from their holes, unlike marmots; if he was right about that, then he’d only have to worry about burrows quite close to his campsite. He would look around for a new site where the ground was generally rockier, and didn’t have burrows. In the meantime, though, he would continue to use this one, in order to draw in the mole rats.

As for the trap itself, he set it up like a rabbit snare, only very close to the hole. He also sprinkled a bit of dirt over both the bait and part of the snare. He’d heard that mole rats would eat just about anything, so he used some leftover scraps from his lunch. The traveler realized that he didn’t know whether mole rats were more active by day or night, so he resolved to come back in the evening.

When he came by to check the trap that evening, Oram found it undisturbed. This surprised him, as he would have thought something would have come for the food, even if not the mole rat. He decided to check again in the morning. That night was cool, and the season was still early enough that there were few insects and frogs to disturb the hunter’s sleep.

The dawn came with sparse bird calls. Only a few birds were singing this early in the post-thaw season; Oram could make out a titmouse and a few others. Punctuated by the inevitable cawing of crows. The Sweetvine would become a riot of songs and calls by the end of Ashan, the hunter knew.

The trap had been sprung, but there was nothing in the snare, which swung back and forth in the morning breeze like a reproachful finger. Probably a raccoon, he realized, although he could only guess, as whatever it had been had dug at the ground too much to leave behind clear tracks.

Oram sighed. It was the crow problem all over again. He would need to build a better trap, one more likely to catch his intended quarry and not be worried by other critters. Glaring at the swinging, vacant snare, the hunter considered his options. He would need something that would lure a small burrowing animal like a mole rat, but not something else like a raccoon or even worse, a bear. What would a small, burrowing animal like? A small burrow, maybe? Oram had an idea; however, to carry it out, he would need to head back into town for some better supplies.

Oram returned to his camp that afternoon with what he needed: some more suitable bait (as in: not his own food) and a slightly-cracked clay jar his sister-in-law was using as a rushlight holder. His plan was to set up a treadle snare, with the jar on its side facing towards facing the mole-rat’s burrow hole, and its base resting atop the trigger stick. The bait would, he hoped, lure the mole rat into the jar -the hunter was guessing that a mole rat wouldn’t mind checking out a narrow, dark hollow which entrance would be too tight for a bigger scavenger like a raccoon. When the mole rat was inside, its weight would push the trigger down out of the notched sticks holding it and the trap would spring. He tied the snare noose tight around the lip of the jar, so that it would pull up upright with the animal trapped inside.

Oram hadn’t made a treadle snare in some time. It shared several elements with a regular snare, such as a horizontal trigger stick, tied to a snare wire, and loosely held in place with a pair of notched sticks driven into the ground. To this Oram added several parallel sticks, laid lean-to style atop the trigger stick to form a makeshift pressure plate. The real trick was how to calibrate the tension to respond to the right amount of weight. If the trigger were too sensitive, the trap might trigger the moment a crow looked at it. Too heavy, and the snare might not go off at all, even if a raccoon tried to make off with the jar. Getting the set just the way he *thought* he needed it was the work of nearly a break.

When at last he was done getting the treadle snare adjusted, Oram was ready to call it an evening, but he recalled, with a groan, that he had a few more things to do around his campsite. Leaving his trap, he went to hang his find a place to hang his food bag. While he did not anticipate any bear in the area, he knew that, besides the mole rats, there were probably raccoon in the area, so he set up a “bear bag” by tying a rope between two well-spaced trees, about fifty paces away from his sleeping area, and then lashing his food bag to it. Then he pulled the rope taut so that it raised the food bag well above the ground. It was nearly dark by the time he was finished, so the hunter just went straight to bed once he was done with the bag.

The next morning Oram found the jar on the ground just off to the side of the treadle. The bait . Muttering irritably, Oram looked more closely at his set and realized he had forgotten something important: after all the aggravation of getting the treadle’s weight and tension just right, he had called it a trial before creating a funnel to prevent his quarry from approaching his trap from the side. Something, perhaps the mole rat, had nudged the jar off of the treadle, and then crawled inside and taken the bait undisturbed. His father would no doubt have boxed his ears for skipping a step.

Determined to do it right this time, Oram reset the treadle snare, then drove sticks into the ground on either side of it so that his quarry could not approach from the side again. This would also prevent the jar from getting blown off the treadle by a strong wind.

Karem must have been pleased by his application and attention to detail this time, for the trap triggered within a few breaks. Oram could tell by the way the jar wobbled as it swung that there was something wriggling inside.

Taking the jar down to examine the inside, Oram was rewarded with the sight of a wrinkled, pink form writhing around in the shadowy bottom. The traveler’s method for trapping the thing meant that it was still alive and kicking, so he would have to find a way to incapacitate and kill it before he could see the factor about selling the skin. For the time being, the hunter simply stoppered the jar and hung it from Mule’s saddle horn to take back into town.

The factor gave Oram a pitying look when he asked him how best to kill the trapped mole rat. ”You sure you’ve done this before, Oram?” the factor asked. ”If I hadn’t seen you before I’d have you pegged for a greenhorn askin’ a question like that. Best way to kill a trapped mole rat, if you ask me? Poison. Easy. The buggers are voracious; they’ll eat it. Just get some rat poison, mix it with some food. Drop it in and wait. Once the thing stops moving, bring it back, I’ll show you how to skin it.”

Oram felt the critter stir inside the jar. ”I think it heard you,” he suggested. The factor grinned nastily. ”It’ll eat it, anyway, or it’ll starve. Either way, bring the thing back once it stops moving.” Oram thanked the factor and then went to find some poison; he remembered taht Groom Peavers had mentioned the herbalist from which he had gotten the poison he had used in their fox trap, so the traveler sought her out and got rat poison from her.

To Oram’s chargin, the mole rat made a decent go of getting out of the jar when he removed the stopper to introduce the poisoned bait. The hunter had to bash several times at its wrinkled pink claws and eyeless, toothy face before he was able to replace the stopper. And then he waited. It wasn’t until the next morning that he opened the jar and shook it a few times while peering at the inert pink form at the bottom before he was convinced it was truly dead.

The factor wrinkled his nose when he opened the jar Oram brought back. ”You’ll want to clean that out before you use it again,” he remarked. ”For anything.” He nudged the small, pink body. ”…and I’d clean the things off before you skin them if I were you, assuming you intend to keep trapping them that way.

The mole rat’s passing had been…messy. Oram was certain that Signy would want a new jar, since this one wasn’t even acceptable for keeping rushlights in anymore. And of course, trapped in the jar, it had wallowed in its own mess before expiring, so the factor’s last observation was apt. Oram nodded and waited. There was a pause.

”Do you know how to skin one of these?” Oram asked. ”I’ve never caught one before.” The factor smirked. ”I didn’t figure you’d caught one before. But you skin them the same way you skin a rat -in fact it’s easier. The skin is already really soft and loose, so you don’t have to keep sticking a probe under to pry it loose from the carcass.”

The factor took a small scalpel and made a cut around the base of the tail. ”Rats aren’t like rabbit,” he explained; ”you make your long cut dorsally -along the spine- not ventrally.” He pantomimed making the cut with the scalpel. ”If this were a regular rat, you’d make that long cut first, but since mole skin is so soft and thin, you do it last. Before that, you cut around the neck and the base of the tail, all the way around so that the skin there is separated from that on the rest of the body.” With practiced ease, the factor actually made these cuts. ”Next you cut from the spine towards each of the limbs, all the way to the ankles. Then you make the long cut along the spine.”

All of this was the work of a few trills; the factor made it look easy. Lastly, he peeled the flaps of skin loose from the carcass down either side of the body and slid it gently off over the legs. He held up the skin between two fingers to show Oram. ”There. Now get rid of this carcass; nobody will want it, not even people who would eat rats, I wager. And feel free to bring back more skins when you harvest them. Mole rats are highly social, so wherever you found this one, you’ll find others.” The factor smirked. ”No more live rats-in-a-jar, though, got it?”

Oram nodded and thanked the factor, then went off to clean out the jar and reset his trap. He hoped the factor was right about the mole rats being social; he didn’t know how many of those soft hides he would mangle before he got the hang of skinning the things.