◎Happy Day 68: Rabbit Will Never Be a Slave◎
There were four hares in the reservoir, two large and two small, squatting in a corner, looking gray.
The two big ones stretched out their bodies and moved around, each looking half a meter long.
The two smaller ones are of normal size, about twenty centimeters long.
Everyone has heard the story of the rabbit kicking the eagle. Ordinary hares can do this, so they don't want to try to use the strength of this big guy.
A few people felt that they still had to have dreams, so they carefully pressed the membrane back and carefully blocked the vents that had been left before.
Jiang Muyun, Chu Buwen, and Qin Shiwu were responsible for returning to test the effectiveness of the drugs, while the others stayed here to guard the second cornerstone of their farming industry. If necessary, they could directly turn the cornerstone into a rabbit hot pot, which was better than getting nothing at all.
Several people took out all the medicines they had looted before. Qin Shiwu picked out the sleeping pills, anesthetic pills and other similar drugs one by one, mixed them with food, and placed them in front of Dabai and Xiaobai, waiting for them to make a choice.
Dabai and Xiaobai weren't buying it at all. They just squatted there, expressionlessly watching the three perform. Only when Chu Buwen stuffed a tablet of oxazepam into his luncheon meat did Dabai take pity and move a couple of steps closer to him.
When the three of them saw that Dabai was about to eat the luncheon meat, they hurriedly and happily pulled Dabai away.
It’s enough to know that the medicine can be concealed. They don’t want their children to eat anything carelessly.
As a result, the hand that Chu Buwen stretched out was slapped away by Dabai with one claw.
Dabai finished the luncheon meat in two or three bites, picked out the white tablets accurately, pushed them towards Chu Buwen with his paws, and squatted back with his head held high.
Jiang Muyun looked at the two balls of black fur, one large and one small: "Did they smell something, or did they know we were stuffing something into the food?"
Qin Shiwu was a man with a keen interest in knowledge. He immediately took Xiaobai's food bowl and poured a glass of water into the clean bowl in front of Xiaobai. He even took a sip before pouring the water.
Xiaobai lowered his head and sniffed it, then spilled the water with a splash.
Jiang Muyun asked in a low voice: "Are you okay after drinking it yourself?"
Qin Shiwu: "I've said we can't talk about toxicity without considering the dosage."
But it seems that the drugging method is not feasible.
Qin Shiwu collected all the pills he had taken out.
They are all prescription drugs, very rare. Although he can't put them back together and use them after taking them apart, he can use them to feed nails.
Qin Shiwu was worried: "What should we do? Or should we just arrest them directly?"
Chu Buwen frowned: "In our current situation, catching them is actually easy, the difficult part is how to control them after catching them."
Now if they want to catch those rabbits, they just need to find a big bag that is strong enough to block the only exit, then make some noise outside to scare them, and then wait for the rabbits to fall into the trap.
But what they want is to control these rabbits and raise them, instead of catching them, beating them through a bag and then slaughtering them and putting them into the pot.
Jiang Muyun had seen successful cases of raising rabbits in his previous life. Basically, they would find an iron chain or a strong enough nylon rope, tie up both hind legs of the rabbit and put handcuffs on them, and then tie the other end of the rope to a fixed point.
When you want to catch the rabbit, just drag it from the other end of the rope so that its most powerful hind legs remain restrained.
It looks simple, but the hurdle in the middle - how to tie the rabbit's legs - has stopped more than half of the people who want to keep a rabbit after catching it.
A rabbit is more than half a meter long, and with its ears and legs fully extended, it can be more than a meter long. If you dare to pull its ears, it will kick you in the heart.
At worst, you can kick out a few phalanges, radius and ulna while the ropes are being tied, then break free and run away or turn over and start eating.
Some people would beat up the rabbits they caught and then tie them up.
Jiang Muyun and Chu Buwen had both done this kind of thing: making rabbits dizzy and half-dead and then tying them up to be used as reserve food.
But the rabbits in their hands had similar endings.
Those who were tied up and unable to move starved themselves to death.
If there is room to move around, just find a place and bang your head against it and die.
Before the end of the world, the hares were very aggressive and had typical violent tempers. After the end of the world, they were even more determined to die rather than surrender.
You want to support me after I've hurt you? Dream on! Rabbit will never be a slave!
Everyone knows that rabbits that are caught intact are less likely to commit suicide.
But in this case, the problem is back to square one - even if someone is lucky enough to catch an intact rabbit, how can they tie up a lively and aggressive rabbit that can break a person's bones with one kick?
Jiang Muyun and his friends had only seen someone successfully raise rabbits, but they didn't know how they did it.
Who would talk about their cooking skills?
Jiang Muyun walked around the cave twice, then suddenly stared at the pile of pills they had just opened. He said thoughtfully, "Brother, do you think these pills will still work if they are ground into powder and inhaled directly?"
It’s a pity that they didn’t see any volatile anesthetics like □□ in the Nanshan warehouse at that time, otherwise there wouldn’t be so much trouble now.
Qin Shiwu recalled the drugs he had just picked out: "There are some that can be used, but the effectiveness mainly depends on how much they can be inhaled."
If they use this method, they will lose a lot of money on the medicine.
Jiang Muyun was disappointed. It seemed that the medication method was completely hopeless.
We can't use medicine or injections, and we have to ensure the rabbits' mood, so that they won't die in front of us if they are unhappy.
Chu Buwen looked at the snow outside and came up with a trick: "Why don't we dig a deep pit next to the reservoir and let them fall into it. When they are frozen to death, we can fish them out later."
Qin Shiwu exclaimed, "A hero saving a beauty?"
Jiang Muyun's eyes changed when he looked at Chu Buwen: "You really have a broad mind."
It takes quite an imagination to play such a trick on a group of rabbits.
But if you think about it carefully, this seems to be the most feasible solution at the moment.
It's because these wild rabbits are a bit temperamental. If they want to be raised, they can only coax them.
Because they were afraid of scaring the rabbits, they didn't even take Dabai and Xiaobai to the reservoir, and just set off with a bucket of water.
The few people who stayed behind were amazed by Chu Buwen's ideas, and they all said that today's male high school students really have something special.
The strangeness of their words and the sincerity of their attitude made Chu Buwen confused for a moment as to whether these people had become Onmyojis or not.
The words may be strange, but the matter is definitely serious.
Their hero-saving-beauty pit was dug in front of the steps of the reservoir.
Rabbits have good jumping ability. It is not a problem for an ordinary rabbit to jump half a meter high, but it is even more difficult for these large ones.
To be on the safe side, Zhao Jiahao and others who were in charge of digging the hole started prying the rocks with a few shovels and dug out another hole more than two meters deep.
After the pit is dug, a layer of snow wall is added to the edge, and then water is slowly poured on the snow to allow the snow wall to solidify into an ice wall, striving to freeze the rabbits unconscious in the shortest possible time.
Rabbits' sense of smell is not as good as that of cats and dogs, but it is still more sensitive than that of humans. In order to prevent them from recognizing them as the ones who dug the pit later, Jiang Muyun broke off a small piece of red charcoal and burned it. The light sandalwood scent from the burning red charcoal covered up other smells.
The path from the steps to the ice pit was also cleared, and a few unscrupulous ghosts even used the remaining water to turn the snow walls on both sides of the road into ice walls, giving the rabbits no chance to escape.
Everything was ready, and the membrane covering the reservoir was pressed tightly with snow blocks to ensure that there was only one entrance and exit at the steps.
Zhao Jiahao was holding the lid of the thermos, while Li Anxuan was holding the empty bucket at an angle.
"I knocked." Zhao Jiahao reminded.
Everyone covered their ears and nodded.
Zhao Jiahao gathered his energy and swung the metal lid with both hands towards the bucket.
There was a loud bang, and not only the rabbit but even Jiang Muyun who was covering his ears was startled.
There was a rustling sound, and the sounds of several heavy objects falling to the ground reached the ears of several people, at an astonishing speed.
The location of the steps of the reservoir is also the ventilation hole left by them when they burned charcoal at night. It is very likely that this group of rabbits got into the reservoir from here.
Now suddenly frightened, several rabbits subconsciously want to escape and choose to run out through the old road, which is also normal.
But they didn't expect that there was an ice hole waiting for them outside.
"Fell in?" Jiang Muyun asked in a low voice.
"There's some movement inside." Wang Qingqing replied in a low voice.
Chu Buwen carefully lifted a corner of the membrane and looked into the reservoir, and it was indeed empty.
Jiang Muyun waved his hand, and several people tiptoed away from the reservoir.
"How long do we have to wait? We won't accidentally freeze them to death, will we?" Qin Shiwen finally breathed a sigh of relief after leaving the reservoir, and his voice became normal again.
Jiang Muyun calculated the time: "If the snow doesn't get heavier today, we should be done washing clothes by now."
If it took any longer, she was afraid that the rabbits would be buried half dead in the snow.
"Oh, right." Speaking of rabbits, Jiang Muyun remembered something: "Can we move the vegetables back home?"
The potatoes and sweet potatoes that are not very cold-resistant had been moved back to the cave long ago, but other vegetables with roots that are more cold-resistant were still left in the snow.
Zhou Ying said that at the current temperature, the roots of plants like leeks will not be damaged at all. Freezing the soil in the snow can also prevent pests.
"Let's move them tonight." Zhou Ying, considering the cold resistance of the plant leaves, decided to move them back in advance: "Wait until the vegetables are harvested before putting them out to continue freezing."
Jiang Muyun suggested: "It's better to move out the other soil and turn it over. We should grow more bamboo grass, otherwise the rabbits won't be able to feed them."
In the past, the main reasons for the failure of rabbit farming were threefold: either the rabbits couldn't be tied down, or the rabbits couldn't be kept. Even if both were achieved, it still wouldn't necessarily keep the rabbits full.
Rabbits give birth to a lot and eat a lot, so the meat they eat should not be fed with random plants.
Once they are unable to feed the rabbits, they will not hesitate to eat their own food.
However, based on Jiang Muyun's understanding of wild rabbits, given the violent tempers of these rabbits, they might not let him go even if they were full.
After all, before the apocalypse, they were solitary animals, with a habit of fighting between same-sex encounters, and eating their own young was not uncommon. After the apocalypse, their tempers grew as much as their size, and it became even more common for them to attack their own kind.
These rabbits are wild and difficult to tame, and after being captured and bred for generations, they have bad tempers. Once there are too many rabbits in a house, even if they are separated by different rooms, there may be rabbits that will bang their heads against the wall to fight with their counterparts on the other side.
This is also one of the reasons why Jiang Muyun had never heard of a base for mass breeding of wild rabbits in his previous life.
Of course, the most important factor is cost.
Rabbits give birth to many cubs but they die quickly. Every litter of cubs needs to be carefully cared for from birth to slaughter, otherwise they will let humans see what true survival of the fittest means.
In addition, after the end of the world, it is not possible to find a large amount of fodder in every season, making large-scale breeding even more difficult.
Finally, we managed to raise a group of them. However, the meat was not tasty without seasoning, and it only served to fill the stomach and save lives.
We eat them to survive anyway, so it would be better to use the manpower and resources to raise mushrooms and insects, which can produce much higher yields than rabbits.
However, Jiang Muyun had stockpiled a lot of seasonings before the end of the world, and other people also brought a lot of seasonings home when they searched for supplies. They are not planning to expand the scale of raising rabbits now, just enough to have enough for themselves to enjoy meat occasionally.
With the bamboo grass, which has vitality comparable to that of wild grass, plus other plants on the mountain, feeding a few rabbits should be... not difficult, right?
In the afternoon, after washing all the quilts and cotton clothes with great effort and stuffing them all into the cave to dry, the few people went to welcome their second cornerstone of the breeding industry with full of hope.
All that was left to them were two big guys lying in a pile of bloody ice.
Jiang Muyun took the rabbit handed to him by Li Anxuan with great heartache.
The eyes of these two big guys were half open, looking weak, and they allowed several people to manipulate them.
Jiang Muyun cleared away the ice and blood on their bodies and found that their ears were bitten to pieces and there were many bruises on their bodies.
Just by looking at the pile of bloody fur at the bottom of the pit, you can tell who caused these wounds.
Jiang Muyun lamented as he tied ropes around the two unconscious rabbits' hind legs, "In just one afternoon, only two are left out of the four. I wonder if this scumbag parent can survive the injuries left by their two rebellious sons."
It was Wang Qingqing's first time seeing a wild rabbit. She peeked into the pit and gasped, "They're made for each other, truly made for each other."
After tying up the rabbits' strongest hind legs, Jiang Muyun looked at their dying breaths and gave up the idea of hanging them up and walking away.
"I heard that rabbits have a strong smell. Let's enclose a piece of land outside the big cave to raise them." Jiang Muyun said with pity.
Originally, they planned to find a cave and put these two in there first.
Anyway, the rabbits won't freeze to death at this temperature, and their legs are tied up. There's no need to worry about them running away if you tie the other end of the rope to a rock. Can they bite through the 11-core parachute rope with their bare hands?
Looking at the appearance of these two now, if they continue to make trouble, I’m afraid they will really have to eat rabbit meat hotpot.
It’s better to put them outside the big cave. Anyway, they have to heat the kang to dry clothes these days. The temperature near the cave is higher, so the chances of them surviving are greater.
The two rabbits' nest was located not far from the smoke outlet. The mountain wall there was slightly heated by the temperature inside the cave, and the temperature was higher than the surrounding area.
He dug a hole to make a nest for the two rabbits, fixed the remaining metal poles from the previous frame in the ground, covered them with film to keep out the snow, and tied the rope connected to the rabbits' hind legs to the metal poles. Zhao Jiahao then announced that the Zhanshanweiwang wild rabbit farm had taken shape.
Zhou Ying plucked two handfuls of bamboo grass, put some of it near the mouths of the two rabbits as food, and crushed the rest of it and applied it on their wounds.
All that remains is their tenacious vitality.
The unexpected guests in the reservoir have settled down, and it is time for the reservoir to play its true role.
The waterproof layer has been laid, so the reservoir does not need to be covered with membrane cloth.
The snow hasn't been heavy these days, and it often takes a day and a night for the snow to accumulate to about 20 centimeters.
According to the previous plan, several people poured hot water into the reservoir every morning and evening. After pouring, they stirred it with long poles, trying to use the temperature of the hot water to melt the snow, so that the snow on the bottom layer would melt into water and then condense into ice.
Due to the limited amount of snow, the current water storage efficiency is very low, but at least it proves that their idea is feasible.
It would also be nice to accumulate a layer of ice at the bottom of the pool while the snow is not too heavy.
If the snow piles up to one or two meters thick overnight, they may not be able to melt that much.
But now, in order to dry quilts and cotton clothes, the kang in the big cave has been kept on fire all the time, and boiling water is just a side job.
After the quilts and cotton clothes were dried, a group of people who were used to relying on integrity to survive the winter decisively extinguished the stove, packed up their things and went home.
Everyone has to go out to work during the day, clearing snow and removing ice. Occasionally, they also have to turn the soil of the plants at home and pay attention to their growth.
Zhou Ying built a simple greenhouse for cold-sensitive plants such as potatoes and sweet potatoes, and took good care of them every day during the snowy days, always paying attention to their physical and mental health so that she could heat up the kang as soon as they showed signs of discomfort.
At night, according to Jiang Muyun's thermometer, the temperature in the cave was only minus five or six degrees Celsius, which was exactly the normal temperature in Nanshi in winter.
Jiang Muyun had a battery in his hand, which was enough to turn on an electric blanket.
For others who don’t have electric blankets, they can just cover themselves with an extra quilt and add two hot water bottles when sleeping. They can handle it!
As for the reservoir, Jiang Muyun made full use of it.
When she was burning charcoal, she would place bottles and jars filled with snow at the door of the charcoal kiln, use the temperature of the kiln to melt the snow, and then pour the water into the reservoir.
The efficiency is even lower than before, but the advantage is that it is a zero-cost business, so you will make a profit no matter how much you make.
You can't just light a fire and boil a lot of water in the reservoir to make ice before they even start heating the kang. That would be too extravagant.
Once the kang in the big cave went out, life became difficult for the two rabbits outside the cave.
Qin Shiwen even considered burning a piece of charcoal every day to keep them warm. However, he later found that the injuries of the two cats were healing very quickly and they had already started digging holes and nests along the mountain wall, so he gave up the idea.
It's already late, and people are just making do with their lives. Since these two rabbits can survive, they might as well make do with them.
So far, it seems that Chu Buwen's plan to deceive the rabbits' feelings is somewhat effective. The two rabbits are quite lively and do not show any tendency to commit suicide. However, they do have a serious tendency to send other creatures to the afterlife.
In addition to the parents who feed and clothe them, other creatures here also include big and small whitebait trying to come and see their new friends, and occasionally each other.
The only problem was that they were running out of fodder.
The only things they had available to feed the rabbits were leftover potato leaves, dried bamboo grass, and a small amount of fresh bamboo grass.
They definitely wouldn't be willing to feed other vegetables like leeks to rabbits.
Fortunately, there were many plants growing on the mountain before. Although they are now buried under heavy snow, the plants will not disappear out of thin air.
At first, a few people wanted to clear out wherever they could find plants.
After falling a few times, the idea disappeared.
The reason why walking in deep snow is inconvenient is that there is resistance to movement and there is no footing when you step on it.
The temperature here is not low enough, and the snow underneath has not frozen solid yet. Sometimes when you step on it, you feel that it is solid, but the moment your weight is actually pressed on it, the snow layer under your feet will suddenly drop a bit.
If one loses balance at this moment, he or she may fall directly into the snow pile.
If it was a flat road, they could just rush over, but the problem is that they are on a mountain.
The unlucky guy Zhao Jiahao lost his balance and slid down the slope for several meters, using his weight to push a path through the snow. He was so scared that he broke out in a cold sweat in the middle of winter.
Since it is impossible to clear the snow accurately, you can only clear it wherever you go.
They made several homemade snow shovels and slowly cleared the snow on the mountain from top to bottom.
It's quite interesting to throw a lump of snow from above and watch it create a deep pit in the snow, and then the whole lump of snow sinks into the pit and disappears.
It’s just that they were happy up there, but suffered all the way down there while cleaning.
The snow that had been thrown down the mountain from above was piled up in the same place, and the workload became greater the further down we went.
But we have to do this.
You can't just clear a truckload of snow and dump it at the foot of the mountain.
"Fortunately, we only need to clear this area on the mountainside. If we have to clear the entire mountain, we might as well just kill them and have hot pot with them." Qin Shiwen finally cleared out a piece of green, and hopefully cut off some branches and leaves of various plants in it and put them into the cloth bag he carried with him.
After Dabai's tireless patrols on the mountain, there are very few highly poisonous plants, but they have no idea which ones are on the diet of the two rabbits.
They could only search through everything that was shoveled out, take it back and let Qin Shiwu pick out the plants that might contain chronic toxins, and let the other two choose the rest.
Given the habits of wild rabbits, it is of course impossible to let them choose which plants they like to eat.
After putting them in, see if they don't want to eat even if they are hungry. You can avoid this situation when finding food for them in the future.
After all, the rabbit has a bad temper. If they always bring food that the rabbit doesn't like, the rabbit will get angry and love freedom more than life, and all their efforts will be in vain.
Jiang Muyun had just finished harvesting a wave of plant samples. "If the snow doesn't last long, we really only need to clear the mountainside. But if it keeps falling, sooner or later we'll have to start from the top."
Now they were busy looking for food for the two rabbits and opening up a new road, so they had no energy to clear the snow from the top of the mountain.
But if the snow continues to fall like this, they won't be able to choose whether to clear it up or not.
The snow that fell these days was fluffy and wet, and in some places with steeper terrain, the snow was already crumbling.
If they leave the snow on the top of the mountain unattended, they might be able to witness a spectacular avalanche in Nanshi.
Zhao Jiahao looked at the vast expanse of white snow on the top of the mountain with a hint of despair: "I have to shovel from the top to the mountainside, and then from the mountainside to the foot of the mountain. I have to shovel the same snow eight hundred times before I can shovel it down. What kind of suffering is this in the world?"
Wang Qingqing murmured, "Why don't we just let it collapse now while the snow is still light? If it collapses once, we won't have to go up the mountain to clear the snow. At least we can start directly from halfway up the mountain."
Before Wang Qingqing could finish her words, a vague crisp sound was heard. Several people watched helplessly as a piece of snow on the top of the mountain, which was already wobbly, was shaken by the sound and slid down.
The avalanche was still far away at this time, at most snow would fall on the top of the mountain, but Wang Qingqing was really terrified.
Wang Qingqing looked up at the sky, tears almost streaming down her face. "This isn't my business, is it? Should I really go find a Buddha to pray to?"
Jiang Muyun and the others pulled her towards the cave: "Let's not worry about Buddha at this time!"
That sound just now was a gunshot. Zhao Jiahao and Li Anxuan dare to guarantee it with the countless pairs of smelly socks they washed while serving in the army!
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