It was cold and wet and I hadn’t brought my snowshoes, but the blood trail led right up into it. That sucked, because I could see the fur tufts and knew what I was looking for and it wasn’t an animal. It was one of the night eyed folk, and I knew it. The fur was from a black bear, you could see fur every now and again, and there were four sets of prints from our hunters, leading, pulling, pushing, and dragging the bear up and over the drifts. Their feet and hands left the usual markings, long skinny human feet, splayed toes and hands. More instinctive creatures than anything else. I wonder what it was that had made them want to hunt the bear? They couldn’t be that hungry, could they?

From what I had been reading about gorillas, the main two big boys ate mostly fruits or vegetables. Humans had the same type of teeth, and the lowland and mountain gorilla ate only 3% animal life. The rest of the time, they were vegetarians. That’s the key to health, I think, mimic nature when I can, and get technology to help you along into the progression of the human animal. There are no termites here, so my gorilla mimic can’t be perfect, but… Hey. How does roast beef sound?

But I wouldn’t eat a bear. They taste disgusting. Why would you kill a bear? They didn’t need the meat. There were plenty of mice and rabbits to eat that they could catch. And they did just that, let me tell you, I’ve picked through enough scat to know. It’s kinda funny seeing the tiny bones, but… To each their own, eh?

I pulled up my GPS and marked the spot. Then I took some photos and packed everything back up. I might not be able to make it back up this way again for a while, so I suppose my curiosity would have to do it. Before I left, I found a nice clearing and spray painted a huge orange “X” on the rock. I maybe could get back here with my biggest drone.

I was walking back down as a pack of them were coming up. As I measured it, about six hundred meters down from where I had abandoned the trail, there they were, coming right up towards me. Four of them – a family unit. The wind was flowing across the slope, the prevailing winds are west by southwest this time of year, making hunting a little easier, but also stuff like this can happen as well if you’re headed south east and your prey is coming the opposite direction. No one moved… Well… My right hand lost its glove and found my side-arm, but after that, no one moved.

I had seen a lot of the night eyed in the past. I had photos of them with my drone, and I even had ‘em named. There were around twenty four of them in the pack that I was familiar with, and the four that stood in front of me, I didn’t recognize.