Chapter 27 South China Tiger (Twenty-Seven)
Queen Mulan realized that her baby had fallen into the "poisonous claws", and immediately stopped playing badly, and rushed back to the nest as quickly as possible to severely punish the enemy tiger!
Yu Yiyun was afraid that Zhen'an would be beaten to death, so he chased after him as fast as he could, wanting to run over and take sides.
Before arriving at the cave, I could still hear Zhen'an's screams, like a cat being killed, echoing over the jungle.
“Ooooooooooooooooo!!!”
“…”
The little fat tiger mourned silently for a few seconds and drew a cross on the ground with his paws.
Rest in peace, Aquaman!
Although it is not clear whether drawing a cross in the Qinling Mountains can help to liberate souls.
But Pig is not very good at drawing more complex patterns.
He bowed his head and closed his eyes to express his deep condolences.
When he opened his eyes again, he saw Zhen'an coming out of the cave with a grievance, and his handsome cat-like face had two more scars.
Sorry, it’s too early to observe the moment of silence.
"Woo woo!" Seeing the little fat tiger, Zhen'an felt so aggrieved that he almost broke. He kept muttering and yelling, full of complaints.
Didn’t you say that she would never come back?
Not only did she come back, she slapped me in the face!!!
"Ah~" Fat Tiger came forward and rubbed Zhen'an's scarred nose sympathetically, with a huge conspiracy brewing in his heart...
Hehe, it seems like I figured out how to get Mulan to come back to the nest to feed her.
However, this method seems a bit time-consuming.
Fat Tiger clapped his paws twice again, comforting them in advance for the next time and the next time.
Just bear with it. After all, that's your own baby.
Zhen'an felt very aggrieved and cried for a long time.
Seeing the little tiger sister carried by Yu Yiyun, the cloudy sky suddenly turned sunny. She ran over, circled around her little princess, and wagged her tail as a cat toy for her.
While playing, I actually forgot about my situation.
After feeding her baby, Mulan discovered Zhen'an was still staying in her territory. She roared and drove the cub-stealing tiger far away.
Yu Yiyun sighed helplessly when she saw her aunt running away again after feeding her.
Alas, every tiger has his own destiny.
Fat Tiger resigned himself to his fate and went into the cave to repay Mulan for the wild boar, serow and deer she had fed him...
When the tiger sister saw her brother going in, she lowered her head and sniffed around, then slowly went in as well.
The light in the cave is relatively dim, and even in summer, the temperature is much lower than outside.
Yu Yiyun lay there skillfully, pushing the six little babies under her belly, fearing that any of them would catch a cold in the hot summer with an average temperature of 35 degrees.
Friends who have raised tigers at home know that when cats are born, they look different almost every day and grow at an incredibly fast rate.
Yu Yiyun had only been taking care of the cubs for a few days, and the little ones had grown twice as big.
I was all hunched over my brother, feeling very crowded.
The little sister tiger watched for a while, then followed her brother's example and lay down beside him, carefully observing the newborn tiger cub.
Mulan's baby is only 10 days old, but he has experienced countless storms.
Wild tigers like to live alone, and other tiger cubs will only have contact with their mothers until they grow up.
Not long after they were born, they came into contact with three tigers, Mulan, Yunxiao and Zhen'an, and had become accustomed to the tigers changing around them.
Now, there is another tiger in the cave.
Not only is it non-aggressive, it also smells sweet and as warm as the sun.
There was a brave cub that couldn't get the advantageous position in Yu Yiyun's arms, so it rolled and crawled towards the tiger sister and dived into her arms.
"Ouch!" Sister Tiger screamed in fright, obviously at a loss.
She was only six months old and had only come into contact with her brothers and sisters in the same litter, so she didn't know how to take care of cubs.
In a panic, Tiger Sister suddenly recalled her childhood: it was like this before, she couldn’t get milk from her mother’s arms, and she was squeezed so hard that she had no place to sleep.
It was winter, and she was shivering with cold as she hugged her mother's tail pitifully.
later……
Sister Tiger recalled her childhood experiences and imitated her brother at that time. She carefully gathered the little boy in her arms, patted his back in a proper manner, and tried her best to coax her little brother to sleep.
Yu Yiyun quietly observed the two babies, one big and one small, and was successfully touched by their cuteness!
The audience who were waiting in the live broadcast room were also so touched by the cuteness that they lost their minds and frantically scrolled through the screen, with uncontrollable smiles on their faces.
[Ahhh, so cute, so cute! This is so cute, I really want to raise one~ What color sack do you like? 】
【Tiger and Mulan are watching you: Are you the one who wants to steal my child?】
[Ah, this... When I think about how they will grow up to be like Shanjun and Mulan, I instantly fall to my knees! ]
[Oh my god! That underage tigress actually took care of her cubs? She is still far from sexual maturity, so she shouldn't have this awareness, right? ]
[Don't you forget who raised Tiger Sister? In most of her childhood photos, she was lying in Xiao Yunyun's arms~]
[@Wildlife Team, why don’t you put a camera in the territory of Shatangju? I want to see Xiao Yunyun taking care of her little sister Tiger! ]
[@Rewilding Team, why don’t you put cameras in the tiger’s territory? I want to see cat movies! ]
[Rewilding Team: We will give everyone a unified reply, because the cameras used for live broadcast are expensive, and if they are attacked by a tiger, we will suffer heavy losses.
Shatangju is very curious and has a history of damaging cameras.
As for Tiger Tiger…his territory is so large, and based on the maximum shooting range of 10 square kilometers, at least fifty of them should be installed. (And the reason of "wanting to watch cat movies" is too offensive, please respect Tiger Tiger's privacy and reject it!]
[The official did a great job~get rid of the old pervert! ]
Queen Mulan cruelly and decisively drove away her male tiger partner. After returning to the territory, she found that the daughter of the tigress next door had sneaked into her own tiger den, but she acted as if nothing had happened and went hunting with her tail wagging.
As the best cooking cat in the Qinling Mountains, Mulan's hunting skills have not deteriorated at all after giving birth to cubs.
In just three hours, she dragged back a wild boar that was twice as heavy as herself, and gave a skillful roar, calling Fat Tiger to come over for dinner.
"Oh~" Taking care of six babies is tiring and stressful. Fat Tiger, who has a big appetite, has been hungry for a long time and rushed to his aunt in a hurry.
Mulan tore open the wild boar's belly neatly and habitually moved aside to let her piglet come over to eat.
Yu Yijun ran over, but did not take the position where she would not be pricked by the wild boar's thorns and could eat the softest meat. Instead, she stuck to the other side of Mulan and nibbled on the front leg meat.
His teeth are much sharper now than when he was a child, and he no longer needs his aunt's help to tear open the animal skins!
[Cat pride.jpg]
After a while, Tiger Sister, like a ripe orange, slowly approached Mulan.
When the distance was less than ten meters, she was sure that Mulan would not attack her, and her brother even called out "Come quickly, come quickly", so she mustered up the courage to come to Mulan.
Although the delicious food was placed in front of her, Tiger Sister did not eat it immediately.
Instead, he first sniffed the scent of Mulan, then boldly moved closer and rubbed against her, showing his most brilliant expression and making friendly sounds.
It seems to be saying: Thank you, Auntie, I like you so much, can I come to your house again in the future~?
Mulan didn't swallow the meat in her mouth. She choked when she met Tiger Sister's expectant eyes.
This tiger is exactly like her mother, and is the natural type that Mulan can't resist.
The queen, who only fights tough battles, certainly can't bear to bully the sweet-smelling tiger sister.
She dodged to the side and pretended to lick her paws to ease the embarrassment.
The garbage-picking allies lurking in the dark found it incomprehensible.
They had lived in Lord Tiger's territory for several years and thought they understood Mulan's character.
In the past, Mulan was fierce, cruel, and decisive in killing people, which scared them so much that they were always nervous when picking up garbage.
Until a little tiger smelling of milk broke into Mulan's territory with a hungry stomach, begging for food.
From then on, the Queen of the Jungle turned into a cat. She not only treated the little waste as her prince, but also gave him the best meat to eat.
Now he gave up his prey and stood by, watching the two little tigers eat quietly.
Could it be that they have misunderstood Lord Tiger all along?
In fact, Lord Tiger is a good cat who loves small animals?
With this thought in mind, the packed lynx secretly revealed half of its body from the tree.
"Roar!" Mulan turned around sharply, revealing her terrifying fangs.
——You disturb my kid's meal, do you think you have a long life? !
The packing lynx was so scared that it meowed and immediately turned around and ran away, not even bothering to pick up the garbage.
I can’t afford to offend you! I can’t afford to offend you!
After eating Mulan's wild boar, Tiger Sister came to visit every now and then, as if she treated this place as her own tiger cub zoo.
Not only do she have six little tigers to play with her, but she also has a gentle big tiger to cook for her. It's really a cat paradise.
When the little tiger girl came home, she excitedly told her brothers and sisters about the joy of the Tiger Kindergarten and invited them to go to the kindergarten with her.
Unfortunately, the other three tigers were too afraid to leave the territory of the Tangju, let alone approach the strange adult tigers.
Netizens who often follow Fat Tiger’s channel can always see Tiger Sister visiting Mulan’s house in a swaggering manner, rolling around with Mulan’s baby, and their relationship is getting closer and closer.
They all joked that she was worthy of being a tiger brought up by Xiao Yunyun, as she had almost completely learned Zhumi's bad habit of fooling around.
Fortunately, most of the road from Mulan to the Tangju territory belongs to the Zhen'an territory, and other large wild animals dare not approach casually.
Sometimes when they meet by chance, Zhen'an can even let Tiger Sister take the Tiger Express.
But this means that Mulan has to raise eight cubs, including a pig that eats so much that one pig can eat as much as seven pigs, so the frequency of hunting has increased significantly.
If Mulan's hunting success rate was a little lower, she wouldn't be able to feed so many mouths.
All the hard work paid off, and with the joint efforts of the tigers, all six tiger babies spent the full month healthy and lively!
You know, after years of captivity and inbreeding, the South China tiger's genetic type has declined, and newborn cubs are extremely fragile.
Even if humans use scientific methods to take close care of newborn babies 24 hours a day, the survival rate is only about 50%.
Not to mention that Mulan's children were born in the wild, and there are so many of them, they are filled with buffs.
Under such unfavorable conditions, the six cubs survived the first month, when they are most likely to die. This is truly a miracle among miracles.
The rewilding team was so excited that the entire internet went crazy. They sent out eight copies of the good news and asked everyone they met, "How did you know that the six tiger cubs in Qinling are one month old?"
However, the joyous atmosphere did not last long.
Tigers born in the wild are destined to have a bumpy life.
If they manage to escape the cold winter, they are destined to face another test - the hot summer.
One month after the tiger cub was one month old, the dry season in Qinling Mountains arrived.
The dry season in the mountains is not as harsh as that in the desert, but it is just as severe.
After mid-July, the daily maximum temperature exceeds 40 degrees, the surface temperature is even higher, and the exposed rocks are scorching hot.
The streams in Mulan's territory gradually dried up. There was still a little water at the end of July, but by August only dried fish were left.
The leaves of the weeds and bushes on both sides of the stream turned yellow, and the trees became wilted.
Under such challenges, herbivores in the territory will leave the mountains and migrate to the river banks out of their survival instinct.
Mulan had to stay and take care of the cubs, so there was no way to migrate.
In this situation, hunting will become extremely difficult.
In previous years, adult tigers could relieve survival pressure by sleeping for long periods of time or leaving their territory.
Not this year, she must eat as much as possible to produce enough milk to feed the baby.
The six babies are too young to leave the territory.
If it were just Mulan, I'm afraid this summer would be very difficult, and I don't know how many of the six tiger cubs would survive.
Fortunately, the little fat tiger came back~
Even though the summer environment was harsh, the rewilding team and netizens who cared about the tigers breathed a sigh of relief.
May the Tiger God bless you, may the Tiger God bless you!
After discovering that there were fewer prey in the territory and that Mulan needed a whole day to hunt and couldn't feed her in time, Fat Tiger took the initiative to take over the hunting mission.
Try to let Mulan save her energy and make sure the tiger baby has enough milk.
Wild animals have extremely strong vitality. As long as the baby can have a sip of milk, it can live one more day.
Fat Tiger, now 15 months old, is no longer the weak and helpless cat who was jumped over by the little muntjac.
After half a year of training, Yu Yiyun's hunting skills became quite proficient, and her success rate was almost as good as Mulan's.
As a cub raised by two excellent tigresses, Fat Tiger combines the experience of Professor Mulan and Kang Kang, and is able to bring back enough prey to eat almost every time.
This year's hot summer is really too hard to bear, and the severity is beyond imagination.
Yu Yiyun walked alone into the depths of the jungle, walking on a path that was once full of mud but now had cracks from the sun, and discovered that the king cobra that had nearly strangled him had moved away.
"Oh..." Yu Yijun shook his head and sighed helplessly.
It is not a good sign when the king snake moves.
Snakes have been regarded as beings close to ghosts and gods since ancient times, and there is a reason for this.
Snakes tend to live in fixed places and will not move easily.
It has a strong sense of danger, and if it moves, it means a natural disaster is approaching.
Yu Yiyun raised his head and looked at the scorching sun hanging in the sky.
Due to the influence of the greenhouse effect, the average summer temperature in Qinling Mountains has increased year by year, gradually evolving into the current situation.
The hot days in summer last too long, and even if it rains occasionally, it is just a drop in the bucket.
The hottest areas of Sichuan and Chongqing cannot even meet the standards for artificial rainfall.
I'm afraid it will be dry for at least a month before the rainy season comes.
For animals, severe drought is more deadly than severe cold.
When both food and water are in short supply, the outcome is either death from starvation or death from thirst.
Fortunately, Yu Yiyun used to be the head of the rewilding team and was familiar with the direction of the mountains and rivers in the reserve.
The water source in Mulan's territory dries up seasonally, but there must be water available in the river dozens of kilometers away.
Yu Yiyun runs fast, so she can definitely go there to drink water, but Mulan and the cubs can’t.
Even if he jumped into the river, filled up his mouth with water and ran back, he would be dried out by the scorching sun on the way.
Yu Yiyun thought hard and suddenly thought of the leopards living in high places.
The clouded leopard is also a large cat with great demand for food and water.
The fact that Leopard can live in the mountains means there must be survival resources there that can ensure its survival.
Yu Yiyun came back from hunting and did not stop after eating. He carefully recalled the location where the leopard had gone down the mountain.
The pig followed his mother's example and became a creeper, climbing up the winding mountain path.
After climbing above two thousand meters, he felt the air becoming thinner.
Most South China tigers and other carnivorous beasts will not come to this height to forage for food.
Therefore, few animals discovered that there was a natural spring at this location.
A steady stream of spring water flows out from the spring.
Over the years, a small puddle of water formed on the hard rock, and moss grew on both sides of the puddle.
Yu Yiyun lowered her head and took a sip. The spring water was cool and sweet. In the hot summer, it was like a heaven-sent nectar.
A few hundred meters above, a leopard heard the noise and jumped down from the top of the mountain to check the situation.
"Oh!" Yu Yiyun made a friendly sound.
Baobao recognized Yu Yiyun and seemed to remember the delicious meal he had in the cold winter. He did not continue to go down and turned around silently and returned to the top of the mountain.
Judging from its behavior, there is no need to fight for this spring.
Maybe the spring water is enough to drink, or maybe Leopard has other places to drink water.
Yu Yiyun didn't have time to delve into it.
The problem of drinking water is temporarily solved, and then there is another problem: food.
It is just August now, and if we calculate the time, the mountains will be dry for at least another month.
According to the current trend, there will be fewer and fewer prey nearby. In the end, it is very likely that you will work hard for a whole day and still not find any prey.
Yu Yiyun knew that under such circumstances, the rewilding team would definitely airdrop supplies.
But the South China tiger lives in the wild and will have to go through countless summers in the future, so it cannot always rely on the rewilding team for supplies.
Yu Yijun returned to the foot of the mountain and went hunting without stopping.
It is not the driest time yet, so prey is relatively easy to find.
Although the little fat tiger was very tired, thinking of his aunt and his hungry brothers and sisters, he still forced himself to cheer up and repeated the hunting over and over again, trying to store more meat.
If Yu Yiyun had a way to store meat in the winter, he naturally had a way to store meat in the summer.
The temperature is high in the summer, and fresh meat left outside will rot and spoil in just one day.
Tigers have relatively high requirements for the freshness of food. Mulan can accept slightly spoiled meat, but cannot accept severely rotten and foul-smelling meat.
After the summer began, she refused to eat meat that was more than four days old, and Yu Yijun couldn't eat it either.
There are no refrigerators in nature, but there is another natural preservative - honey.
Honey is a saturated sugar solution that has the effect of inhibiting bacterial growth.
When Piglet has nothing to do, he likes to chase butterflies and catch dragonflies.
I have a good understanding of the distribution of insects in the mountains and forests and know where to find beehives.
Wild bees build nests with impunity without any human intervention. The hives of large bee colonies are several meters or even more than ten meters large and are filled with raw honey.
Yu Yiyun approached the wild bee colony stealthily. Relying on her thick fur, she was not afraid of being stared at. She stretched out her claws to break off a large piece of honeycomb, held it in her mouth, and ran away.
He still adhered to the approach of "being immoral but retaining some humanity". He did not catch a nest of bees, but instead swatted all the bees nearby.
Bee: Thank you!
I have been collecting honey for so many years and have seen many black bears stealing honey, but this is the first time I have seen a South China tiger stealing honey.
[swearing.jpg]
Yu Yiyun brought the beehive home, and then, like in winter, she tore the meat of the prey into pieces, drained the blood, and then smeared honey on the surface of the meat, keeping a ratio of 5:1 between meat and honey.
Applying a large amount of honey on the surface of the meat can not only delay the decay time, but also retain the juice of the meat, making the taste tender and sweet.
Mulan came out of the cave and saw the tiger cub busying around there.
Although I didn't quite understand, I still went over to help.
The two tigers spent most of the day coating all the pieces of meat with honey, and then moved them to a ventilated place in the cave.
The comments in Huhu's live broadcast room were filled with "No spirits are allowed after the founding of the country."
[Thanks to the great man for popularizing science. This is the first time I know that honey can delay decay. ]
[I have been a human for nearly thirty years, but I still don’t know this little-known fact. How could Xiao Yunyun know it? ]
[Our pig has always been very smart. He knows to freeze the meat in winter. I thought he would dry the meat into jerky in summer.]
[The dried meat needs to be dried for several days. If it rains, it will be ruined. Besides, it is so hot, Mulan and the baby need water, and eating dried meat will make them thirstier.]
[Don't tell me that Pigmy even considered the details? I feel like I went to a fake university and my IQ is lower than that of a tiger...]
[Rewilding team: After a meeting and analysis by the expert group, we came up with a possibility. Little Yunyun is very close to the bears nearby. The bears’ diet includes meat and honey, and sometimes they eat them together. According to observation, some bears have mastered the method of applying honey to make meat more delicious. Little Yunyun has a strong ability to imitate, and perhaps he learned it from the big black bear. ]
[What the official said makes sense, and it doesn't seem like a forced explanation at all~]
Just as Yu Yiyun had expected, hunting became increasingly difficult in the following days, but fortunately, not nothing was gained.
Unable to find prey in Mulan's territory, he returned to Kang Kang's territory.
Kangkang's territory is closer to the river bank, so the environment is relatively less harsh. The disadvantage is that the round trip is too long, which causes the hunting time to increase exponentially.
Thanks to the fact that he had prepared enough meat in advance, Mulan, under the demonstration of Fat Tiger, ate the honey meat that was stored first, and then followed him to cover the fresh prey with honey and store it.
Netizens joked happily, "When I eat apples, I start eating those that are about to go bad, and I end up eating a whole box of rotten apples."
The difference is that the meat coated with honey can be stored for about half a month even in summer without causing stomach upset.
Thanks to the wit of little Fat Tiger, Mulan and her six babies successfully survived the summer.
The six little kids grew bigger and bigger. Whenever Mulan and her brother weren't paying attention, they would crawl to where the meat was stored and steal some.
As a result, after chewing for a long time, the meat was only superficially injured, but the honey was licked off most of the time.
After eating the honey, Milk Ball licked his lips with satisfaction.
It can be imagined that when they grow up, the Qinling bees will not only have to be wary of big black bears, but also of South China tigers.
I'm afraid bees would never imagine in their dreams: Why do the two top predators in the Qinling Pyramid both have a special liking for me?
In late summer and early autumn, the first rainstorm, accompanied by thunder, moistened the long-dry earth.
The arrival of the rainy season means that Yu Yiyun has been in Qinling Mountains for almost a whole year.
It also means...
The tiger cub can no longer be called a 'cub'.
"roar--!"
Yu Yiyun stood at the place where he had marked his territory and let out a long tiger roar that echoed throughout the mountains and forests.
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