Chapter 8 8. The "blood case" caused by a piece of sheepskin

In mid-April, the snow has melted, and the tip of the tender grass has a hint of spring.Yifeng's beard was also covered with chin like weeds, he smiled wryly: "Bang Ke has been with us for such a long time, just throwing eight dead sheep, one dead horse and one dead horse under the Wolf Mountain The dead yak, the other animals are rewarded, but the wolf is not moving, why is it so difficult to invite the wolf to eat!" It is impossible to move the dead yaks we bought, and usually ambush hidden cameras on the spot.In the cold days when there was a shortage of food, we observed many animals quietly eating dead cows. In addition to the main forces such as vultures, foxes, and wild dogs, we also found cats, badgers, tigers, and an unknown scorpion. Big cats.Some animals ate beef, while others ate insects attracted by the carcasses.Wolves are always out of reach.Many times later, some herdsmen told us that they saw wolves eating them.But wolves always observe from a long distance first, and only when they hear the smell, the dead cow has no human smell, and there are no cameras nearby, the wolf will feel at ease to eat.Later, we stopped installing cameras and negotiated with the herdsmen not to disturb the dead cows. A few days later, we went to the scene to confirm the remains that had been eaten by animals.As long as the wolves are willing to eat, it doesn't matter whether they can be photographed.

After the snow melted, fewer and fewer cattle and sheep died of freezing and starvation.We visited several villages, but we couldn't find any dead cattle or sheep. One morning, Tashi brought a dying ram, saying that it had been shot a few days ago and had been hit by the "Nine Goats Attack". He was afraid that he would not survive, so he just gave him a happy ending, slaughtered it and stewed it in a pot. , Try Yifeng's craftsmanship. Herdsmen's traditional method of slaughtering sheep is to suffocate the sheep to death by strangling the mouth and nose with a rope.This kind of mutton without bloodletting is dark in color, rough in texture, and smells of blood, which Han people are not used to eating.So Tashi took advantage of the fact that the sheep was still breathing, and sent them over for us to slaughter.I checked and the ram had three broken legs and a broken rib.I handed over the sheep-killing knife to Yifeng, and I went into the house to light a fire, boil water, and serve dishes with Tashi.

After working for a long time, I waited for the meat to be put into the pot, but I heard the sheep still yelling outside the house.When he opened the door, Yifeng not only didn't have the heart to slaughter the sheep, but took out an iodine bandage and bandaged the sheep.Tashi and I couldn't laugh or cry, it seemed that we couldn't eat the meat with our hands. Tashi left hungry, and I don't blame Yifeng, after all, he has never even killed a chicken. Fortunately, that afternoon, the sheep "died" on its own initiative.I skinned the sheep, and dried the meat face up on the pile of cow dung more than 20 meters away from the hut.Stewed a large pot of mutton soup, and drove to Tashi's house for dinner.

Tashi's pasture is about ten kilometers away from us, and we have to follow the pastoral road to bypass Zeren and the old herdsman Barga's pasture.It was already late when we returned after dinner, and there was no snow on the mountain during this time, so Yifeng decided to drive the off-road vehicle directly back to the hut. As the car drove over the hill and approached the hut, I suddenly noticed that where the headlights were shining, what was moving on the cow dung pile? ! I took a closer look: "Wolf!" Yifeng slams on the brakes and turns on the high beams!I saw a big wolf rolling on our sun-baked sheepskin, suddenly startled by the headlights, and fled into the darkness.

Everything happened so fast that we were caught off guard.Yifeng was the first to react: "Green is back! Green..." A cry detonated all my thoughts.I jumped out of the car, shouted and chased in the direction where the wolf disappeared!The only response to us in the dark field was two crow calls.We went to the cow dung pile with a flashlight to see that the sheepskin was turned over. "Did you see clearly just now?" I asked. "It must be a wolf, but I didn't see who it was. We didn't call him back, so it must be a wild wolf. Could it be that you didn't peel off the sheepskin, and he came to eat the sheep oil on it?"

"Nonsense! There are so many dead sheep and dead horses, and wolves won't eat them. He cares about your broken sheepskin! It's so close to home, who would dare to come except Green?" That is to say, but at such a close distance, if it was Green, they would have recognized each other long ago. If it wasn't Green, what would he do here?For the first time since we returned to the hut, the wolf had come so close on its own initiative, and it was puzzling whether it was Green or not.It's been two months, we've tried our best to feed, and we didn't attract a single wolf. Now we threw a sheepskin, but the wolf came instead. The wolf's taste is really light.Maybe the wolf has inquired many times before. According to the usual practice, we park the car at the foot of the mountain and then walk back to the house. The wolf is sure that it is not too late to evacuate after hearing the footsteps. Who would have thought that this time we drove straight Coming up, he was caught off guard.

The wolf was alarmed tonight, maybe he will not dare to come again, what a pity!But this unexpected encounter gave us confidence—the wolf is secretly watching us. Early the next morning, Yifeng drove to the city to pull coal.I was washing my hair at the door and was flushing with my head buried when I suddenly felt something running by my side.I yelled: "The furnace is booming?" No, that thing seems to be bigger than Luwang.Hearing the Huoyan couple flapping their wings on the fence and screaming more and more anxiously, I reached for a towel and wiped the foam off my face. I opened my eyes and saw a wolf coming out of the fence with a sheepskin in its mouth.I hurriedly held my wet hair and straightened my waist to look straight ahead, but I couldn't see it. I only remembered a wolf's butt looking upside down.I excitedly called "Green" to catch up, and stopped quickly, feeling guilty in my heart.I misidentified a wolf once when I was in the special police force. Fortunately, it was a "house wolf" and there was no danger.

I yelled for a while, but the wolf never came back.Disappointed, my back felt a little cold—this wolf was discovered by us at night, and it dared to commit crimes against the wind during the day. I don’t know how long he had been lurking by my side, waiting for me to close my eyes and touch it.If I were a sheep being targeted by him, wouldn't it be over when I buried my neck just now?I wiped off my cold sweat, but fortunately this wolf only wanted sheep's clothing and had no intention of hurting anyone. Huoyan flew to the eaves and looked around for a while, and the alarm sound gradually stopped. Their sense of crisis is much stronger than that of humans, and they really need to pay attention to the reminders of the bird neighbors in the future.That's when I remembered Luwang, why didn't the serious security guard go to work?When I looked for it, I found him snoring in the room. The poor boy didn't care about it.

"Bangke Totem! The wolf is coming!" As soon as Yifeng came back, I shouted happily.I don't know when, this sentence has become the most exciting news. As soon as I described what happened in the morning, Yifeng jumped up and shouted: "It must be Green! When Green was a child, he liked to drag the sheepskins from your studio to make nests! Spring is the time when wolves give birth. He must be a bedding Use it for the nest!" What Yifeng said also seems to have some truth!We found another old sheepskin and put it on the cow dung pile, installed a surveillance camera near the hut, and waited for the "suspected Green" to appear again.We asked Zeren to say hello to several reliable ranchers nearby. If you find any traces of wolf cubs, don't disturb them. Remember the location and notify us as soon as possible.

We enshrined sheepskins and waited for wolves, but the wolves stopped coming. In order to guard the wolf, we haven't eaten anything decent for a few days.We called Tashi early in the morning, and Tashi said that he was making mutton buns at home. "Buns?" Yifeng was greedy, "Leave me alone!" "Come on, wait for you!" Tashi announced to his family on the other end of the phone before hanging up the phone, "Don't worry, the chef is coming." I wiped my saliva, and followed the "chef" Yifeng to Tashi's house to have a meal. Tashi’s wife is not very good at cooking. Herdsmen usually don’t use dough to make steamed buns, and the meat stuffing only puts light salt, no vegetables, no soy flour, and a lump of hard meat wrapped in dead dough. The ball, that bun is so strong that throwing it can knock a dog out.Yifeng is from the Northwest, and he is especially good at making pasta. He taught Tashi’s wife to use baking soda to make the pasta before wrapping it. Heat oil for a while.The steamed buns are soft and oily, and the stuffing is the safest ecological mutton.Mutton buns have become a delicacy we make on the grassland, so as long as Yifeng is willing to do it, the Zhaxi family is very welcome, and even the Zhaxi family's dog is very friendly to Yifeng.

Not long after, Yifeng lifted the lid of the pot, and the tent was filled with the smell of mutton: "Try to see if it's fully steamed." I grabbed a big bun and blew it happily, and took a bite while it was hot: "It's cooked! It's delicious!" I slipped one into Yifeng's mouth.Tashi couldn't wait for his wife to put the buns on the plate, so he grabbed one first to satisfy his hunger. After I chewed it carefully, I found that the meat this time was delicious and fragrant, without any smell, and it was much smoother than the mutton from Tashi's family in the past.I peeled off the dough and looked at the meat stuffing. The meat was pink and tender, not the light brown color of blood coagulation in the past.I wondered: "This meat is different from usual, it seems to have been bled?" "Really? I didn't pay attention when I was with stuffing." Yifeng took a bite and slowly savored it. "You have a good tongue," Tashi's wife smiled and pushed a large plate of steamed buns in front of me. "The sheep killed by the bangke must have been bled." The speaker has no intention, but the listener has intention. Yifeng and I were simultaneously excited: "Wolf has come? When?!" "Bangke didn't come to my place, but went to the old man Barga's ranch next door." Zhaxi casually melted a ball of ghee in boiling water, and dipped the buns in the ghee water to eat, "At noon the day before yesterday, old man Barga was putting As for the sheep, I saw a sheep from another family in the sheep pile from afar. At first, he didn’t bother to take care of it. If someone’s sheep was lost, the owner of the sheep would come to look for it by himself. The sun was so strong at noon that he couldn’t be bothered to get out of the tent. When he finished his lunch , the sheep was still in the flock of his family, so he went to have a look. Unexpectedly, as soon as the old man came near the flock, the sheep turned into a big wolf, dragging its chubby belly, walking unhurriedly It flashed. The old man Ba ​​was dumbfounded at the time. When he regained his senses and looked again, his big fat sheep was lying on the ground. The side facing the sky had been almost eaten by wolves. Sheepskin. He picked up the sheepskin and saw that it was the sign of my family, so he picked it up and asked me." "Oh," Tashi's wife said with a smile, "Old man Ba ​​cut off the leg of lamb for buns today and gave it to us. It is said that the meat of sheep killed by wolves tastes better, right?" Tashi waved to his wife, signaling not to interrupt him. Tashi didn't care so much about whether the meat was good or not, but he wanted to continue the topic he was interested in: "It's not unusual for a bangke to slaughter a sheep, but the old man said in a daze that the wolf was a They came in sheepskin coats, and everyone laughed when they heard it, because Mr. Baron has many sheep this year that look strange, with black heads, black feet and black bellies, but the fur on their backs is white. It's like wearing sheep's clothing. The old man Ba ​​is short-sighted. He broke his glasses the day before holding his grandson, and he hasn't had time to re-fit them. His eyes are hermaphrodite 30 meters away, and humans and animals are indistinguishable 50 meters away. The old man said that sheep have become Wolf, that's either blinding or bragging. Everyone laughed, and the old man swore in a hurry, and came to me to explain if he had nothing to do. Although wolves eat sheep is a normal loss, the herdsmen don't care, but the old herdsmen value their reputation very much, because once they wear sheep The hat of bragging will have no weight among the villagers in the future, but who would believe such a wicked thing..." "I believe it! There are some things you don't know yet!" I listened to Tashi babbling for a long time, and I couldn't help myself. "Where is the sheepskin? Show me quickly!" I was eager to confirm my guess. Tashi didn't expect me to react so strongly to this "joke", and seeing that Yifeng was equally eager, he put away his smile, put down the buns quickly, and brought in the sheepskin thrown outside the tent. The sheepskin had dried hard, so I squatted down and carefully spread out the sheepskin.The brown advertising paint on the sheep's buttocks is indeed the mark of Tashi's family - every family of herdsmen on the grassland raises cattle and sheep, and in order to distinguish them, each family will use a different advertising color to draw a mark on the sheep.The three legs and ribs on the flesh side of this sheepskin have bruised blood spots, which are scars from being bumped before death.Turning over the wool side for comparison, the brown-red iodine wine that Yifeng applied when bandaging the sheep's wounds still had a slight medicinal smell.As expected, this sheepskin was peeled off by myself a few days ago.Our hut is seven or eight kilometers away from the old man's ranch. The wolf "borrowed" the sheepskin from the hut in the morning, and slaughtered the sheep at the scene of the crime at noon that day. The time of committing the crime happened to coincide. I asked Yifeng to open the curtain of the tent, and held up the sheepskin to look at the sun.A layer of wolf's back hair that falls off in different seasons is sparsely bonded to the dry suet, and the gilded hair roots sway triumphantly in the breeze. The "blood case" caused by a piece of sheepskin came to light.For a long time, I thought that "wolf in sheep's clothing" was just a joking description, but I didn't expect wolves to do this!From this point of view, there must be more than one person who has experienced the wolf's tricks in the past, so the allusion of the "wolf in sheep's clothing" has been passed down to this day.I have seen that when herdsmen look for a "nanny" for their puppies, they look for an ewe with a dead lamb, peel off the skin of the dead lamb, and wrap it around the puppies. Lamb, let him suckle.I don't know if this trick of pretending to be a fake is a man imitating a wolf or a wolf imitating a man. In short, compared with the slippery head of a wolf, a sheep has a head stuffed with leeks and a thick heart, which is very easy to fool.The wolf who stole the sheep's skin not only has a good taste, but also has as many minds as a sieve. He is worried about what people throw at him, and he has to kill the sheep himself to be at ease. It is said that there are sheep in Zeren's pasture, but the wolf would rather look far away. Does he also know that Zeren's sharp eyes are quick and quick, and it is difficult for the sheep to not be aware of it, and the human being not?It's not like the old man Ba ​​who is dizzy and lazy to herd sheep, taking off his glasses is equivalent to being blind, and there are so many weird-looking sheep as cover, this opportunity must not be missed!I watched the wolf take the skin away that day, but I couldn't guess that it was the wolf's disguise tool after thinking about it.Fresh sheepskin oil is very viscous, so it's not hard to imagine a wolf wearing a "vest" and hiding among the sheep for fun.Wolves are not tired of deceit, and a lone wolf can play with the word "deceit". Yifeng told Tashi the whole story, Tashi was stunned for a long time: "wolves are so smart?!" This is just the big wolf's "fancy hunting". If Zhaxi knew that little Green would turn on the TV by himself in a few months, use the remote control to change programs, and learn how to catch fish from the big wolf on TV. West Africa is stupid.I didn't change the subject, but just smiled meaningfully: "Don't underestimate them." Yifeng said that he suspected that the wolf was Green, and wanted to know if he had heavenly eyes.Only then did Tashi come to his senses and pick up the phone: "I'll ask the old man." The old man Ba ​​was so wronged that he spoke a lot harder on the other end of the phone.Tashi asked him about the characteristics of the wolf, but the old man couldn't tell. He didn't wear glasses, so it would be nice if he could see the shadow of the wolf clearly. I was not discouraged either, I took off the wolf fur from the sheepskin and gathered it into a bunch, and put it in a small plastic bag.Since I went back to the grassland to look for Green, it has become my habit to collect wolf fur. I pack all the wolf fur I can get in small plastic bags, and mark the place of discovery and the event that happened. Clue in hand.When Green was with us, I kept his wolf hair and his amputated toe that was stepped on by high heels when he was a child. Even if we still couldn’t find Green when we walked out of the grassland, as long as a handful of wolf hair DNA can match Green On the number one, I can be sure that he is still alive, just passing us in the wilderness.I noted "a wolf in sheep's clothing" on the note, carefully put the note into a plastic bag, and sealed it. Yifeng still asked old man Ba ​​carefully under Tashi's translation: "Which direction did the wolf run?" Even though the news arrived a few days late, we still want to know his whereabouts - wolves like to go the same way. The old man Ba ​​said that he saw the wolf and retreated to Zeren's pasture.We called Zeren immediately and asked him to pay more attention.Unexpectedly, before we could talk about the matter, Zeren spoke first: "I was looking for you, you asked me to keep an eye on the little wolf cubs a few days ago, when I was grazing the cows this morning, I really found a litter The little wolf, as big as a cat, burrowed when he saw me from afar, and the wolf's den is on my pasture!" There are so many surprises today, I can't wait to get out of the phone immediately: "Have you seen the big wolf?!" "I didn't see the big one, but the small one is still in the cave. I'm staring at the one in the nest. Come quickly!" Yifeng and I jumped into the car in a hurry, Tashi stuffed a bag of steamed buns for me, and told me: "If the big wolf comes back, we have to retreat quickly, safety first, Bangke protects the cubs very hard!"