On that day, Zixuan sat by the stream in front of the rabbit hill for a long time, stretching his neck from time to time to look in the direction of the forest. Pen | fun | pavilion www. ｂｉｑｕｇｅ。 Info heard the call of his mother behind him again and again, and he just took it as a deaf ear. The sun was already in the west, and the warm afterglow shone on Xiao Zixuan's face, reflecting the innocent anxiety. It wasn't until he saw the hunter coming out of the bushes that the tender face smiled like a flower, and he got up from the ground with a bone, Zixuan shouted loudly while running: "Dad, I heard a gunshot, what is it doing today?" ”

The hunter took out a pheasant from the canvas bag behind him, held it up in the air and shook it: "Look, how fat this pheasant is!" ”

"Dad, when are you going to take me into the woods?" Zixuan asked eagerly, but he was not interested in the prey in the hunter's hands.

Touching his son's head, the hunter smiled and said, "Wait until you grow up!" ”

"You said that when I was as tall as a gun, you would take me to hunt rabbits, but now that I am taller than a shotgun, why don't you take me there?"

"Look, Daddy brought you back!" The hunter took a large handful of sour dates from his coat pocket and put them in front of his son.

A fresh fragrance wafted out of the hunter's hand.

"Sour dates!" Zixuan took the sour jujube with both hands and asked, "Are the sour jujube ripe again?" ”

"You taste it."

Stuffing a sour jujube into his mouth, Zixuan asked while eating: "Dad, are there a lot of sour jujube trees in the forest?" ”

"There's only one."

"Is there only one? You tell me where it is, I'll pick it myself tomorrow, and my mother also likes to eat sour dates. ”

"That's not good, there are wolves in the woods, aren't you afraid?"

"I'm not afraid of wolves, wolves are afraid of me!"

……

Just after the light snow season, the temperature dropped sharply, and the north wind passed through the night and a thick layer of frost and ice formed in the mountains and forests. The tall trees and dwarf shrubs, the messy and intricate dead branches and leaves, and the withered grass and the exposed adobe all over the ground were all covered with a thick layer of white fluff, so that the whole mountain forest changed into winter makeup overnight, as if the mountain forest was also afraid of the cold, and knew how to grow winter hair to resist the cold like animals.

In the early morning of this day, the eastern sky had already brightened, but the lazy sun refused to show up, Liu Zixuan took the big black dog and walked towards the bushes at the foot of the western slope of Niutoupo. There was not a trace of wind in the forest, but the air was completely cold, and a small group of wild thrushes jumped up and down on the white ground, adding a rare vitality to this dead mountain forest.

When he was walking on the frosty ground and a fresh fragrance suddenly hit his nostrils, Liu Zixuan realized that memory was indeed a knife that pierced people - he saw that in the middle of a small clearing in front of him, there was a different tree species. Seeing it, Liu Zixuan suddenly felt that the time and space around him rotated, and brought it back from this cold morning to the autumn dusk more than ten years ago. It's really strange to remember this kind of thing, and I was awakened by a smell on such a dull evening many years ago.

I finally saw this sour jujube tree with my own eyes, this sour jujube tree that has only appeared in imagination and sleep for many years, as if it suddenly appeared from another world. When he was still a child, Liu Zixuan tasted its fruits many times, and how many times he imagined its appearance in his heart, but he never saw it with his own eyes. Years later, just when he was about to forget that there was a sour jujube tree in the forest, he accidentally encountered it again.

Liu Zixuan never thought that this sour jujube tree had been standing due north and west of this western slope, if it wasn't for a large shrub forest across it, he would have been able to see it from a distance while standing on the rabbit hill.

This jujube tree is so old, but it grows so upright. Looking at it, an inexplicable sense of respect rose in Liu Zixuan's heart, as if he had met an old friend who had never met but had a similar heart, and at the same time, he felt extremely cordial in his heart, but it also brought him infinite sadness.

By the end of November, most of the jujubes had already fallen to the ground, covered with a thick layer of frost and snow. But the faint fragrance could not be hidden by frost and snow, and in such a cold morning, the fragrance was invisibly exaggerated, and it was clearly overflowing in all directions.

Picking up a purple sour jujube and pinching it in his hand, Liu Zixuan was silent in his memory, but the big black dog in the distance quickly woke him up.

A thick bush in front blocked the view, and Liu Zixuan couldn't see the big black dog, but could only hear its "whining" sound, as if someone had provoked it while it was eating.

Leaving the jujube tree, Liu Zixuan stepped into the labyrinthine shrub. The big black dog was digging the soil on the ground in the bushes, and Liu Zixuan ran closer to see that it was a cave the size of a bowl. The entrance to the cave was originally hidden in the grass on the sunny side of a mound, and it would have been difficult to spot if it had not been destroyed by sunspots.

Liu Zixuan looked at the ground nearby, found no traces, and leaned over to the entrance of the cave to sniff, and the smell was as he expected, this was a weasel hole. The entrance of the cave is smaller than the rabbit hole and larger than the rat hole, and it can already be confirmed that the hole was dug by the yellow skin, and the smell coming from the hole confirms the identity of the cave owner. This fishy, pungent and wild smell is conveying a strong breath of life - there is at least one yellow skin in this cave, and Liu Zixuan is ten percent sure of this. He could even imagine that at this moment, the guy in the cave must have been beating faster in fright, listening with his ears pricked up to listen to the movement outside the cave.

The smell coming out of the cave was turbid and heavy, mixed with the moisture of fresh soil, the big black dog had already smelled impulsively, Liu Zixuan just stood up, it buried its head in the hole again and dug up the soil, with a posture of never giving up if it did not dig out the results, Liu Zixuan saw this and immediately stopped its movements. Weasels are an unusually alert species, never willing to get too close to powerful animals, let alone humans. I'm afraid that after the destructive disturbance of the sunspot, this litter of yellow skins will have to move elsewhere that night, and will never come to this neighborhood as a nest again, and it will not be so easy to catch it in the future. Fortunately, even if the weasel in this cave moves far away from here, there may be other weasels moving in in a few days. If the cave can be protected, it can still be used as a good place to hunt weasels in the future.

Stopping the big black dog from continuing to dig holes, Liu Zixuan looked around carefully, only to see that the bushes were full of potholes, mounds and soil, and between the pits, mounds and bushes, there were patches of low weeds and bare land, such a terrain environment was unique for the weasel, so he could conclude that there were more than one or two such caves nearby. After Liu Zixuan checked the terrain, he raised his head to look at the sky, and there was a peregrine falcon hovering in the sky above him, and it just consolidated Liu Zixuan's judgment.

Peregrine falcons, air predators, can be said to be the only natural predators of the weasel on the bull's head slope, and they are widely praised for their survival skills, undoubtedly super flight ability and keen eyesight. They often hover in a circular trajectory over Niutoupo, as if hanging high in the sky with a thin thread, and never feel tired; And their eyesight is incomparable, the kind of seemingly casual hovering in the sky, but always focusing on the ground, if a small animal appears in its field of vision, it is basically difficult to die.

Although weasels have stinky glands for self-defense, they are only effective against ground attacks by wolves or hounds, and against the rapid aerial attacks of peregrine falcons, the weapon is obviously useless. Zixuan's father once said that the scene of the peregrine falcon preying on the weasel was heard by Zixuan, but he still wanted to see that thrilling fight with his own eyes, but that scene was hard to come by, and not everyone was lucky enough to bump into it.

Seeing a peregrine falcon hovering overhead, Liu Zixuan was even more sure that there were a large number of weasels inhabiting here, and he was worried that the sunspot would destroy more holes, so he immediately took it and continued to walk west.

Seeing that it was still early, Liu Zixuan wanted to search for the trap south along the foot of the western slope, but when he was about to turn, he heard the humming of a big black dog behind him. Just before leaving, I sniffed it pepper again, and this guy's sense of smell is really unusually sensitive. Expecting it to find a cave again, Liu Zixuan ran over to stop it in a few steps. However, when he ran closer to take a look, he was immediately dumbfounded.

At that moment, Liu Zixuan almost couldn't believe his eyes - he saw that under the layer of frost and soil that had been cut open by the sunspot, a complete fish bone was exposed! A fishbone, twice as long as a human hand, is lying prominently in the dead grass!

How can there be a fishbone in such a place! Liu Zixuan was puzzled, as far as he knew, in the entire Niutoupo mountain forest, there was only a stream between the mountains of Fuzigang and Niutoupo, which was formed by the impact of the rain after the rain gathered in the valley, but there was water accumulation in the creek only after the rain, if it did not rain for a period of time, the stream would dry up by itself, and there would never be fish alive in such a water body. has been living on Rabbit Hill for more than 20 years, and Liu Zixuan has never seen a fish in the creek.

So, where exactly did this fish come from? Liu Zixuan wondered for a while, this mountain forest is really getting weirder and weirder.

Liu Zixuan searched around the neighborhood again, but couldn't find even a drop of water. How is it not suspicious that a fish appears at the foot of a mountain without any water source? Come to think of it, this shouldn't be done by people, and there is no reason for anyone to throw such a big fish in the wild. Can fish swim in the air like peregrine falcons? Such a ridiculous assumption obviously can't be established, and after thinking about it for a long time, Liu Zixuan still shook his head helplessly.

Perhaps some animal caught the fish out of the water and discarded it in the wilderness before it could eat it...... After thinking about it, Liu Zixuan didn't want to go deeper, so he only took the fish skull out of the soil and hung it high on a bush of fire thorns beside him. Although he couldn't figure out the origin of this fish for a while, Liu Zixuan could conclude that there must be a water source somewhere near this mountain forest. No matter what kind of ability a fish has, it is impossible to run around in the mountains. Since there is no decent body of water on this northern slope, it must be on the southern slope that he has not visited.

……

I walked south for a long time with the big black dog, but still found nothing. It wasn't until the frost and snow on the surface began to melt that Liu Zixuan returned to Rabbit Hill with the big black dog.

By this time, the entire large area of ground north of Niutoupo had been basically explored, but no stone mark had been found, and Liu Zixuan's plan to find the trap before the light snow solar term was completely frustrated. If you can't find it, you can just go into the mountains and be more vigilant in the future. As soon as the light snow passes, even if there is still no snow in the sky, winter is already in full swing, and the long-standing plan for the Weasel is just around the corner.

(To be continued)