Chapter 13 Musk Deer
That’s right, it’s the producer of Musk who contributed to all the major palace fighting dramas.
The hole she dug...
It's really too cruel...
The musk deer has long, upright ears with rounded tips. The hair inside the ears and eyebrows are white. Its body is gray-brown, its tail is thick and short, and its big, round eyes are half-squinted, with two fangs exposed.
There didn't seem to be any obvious wounds on the surface. I don't know if it was too hungry to have strength. Zhao Yeqing didn't know what it ate.
But they are all deer, so they should be herbivores.
She went to the side, carefully selected a handful of tender grass, tied it into a bundle and threw it next to the musk deer.
The musk deer seemed to be startled. It sniffed but did not eat it.
Zhao Yeqing saw that it was frightened and guessed that it must be timid, so it walked away. After more than ten minutes, he tiptoed back to check.
Most of the tender grass thrown in has been eaten.
She breathed a sigh of relief. Fortunately, being able to eat meant there was still hope.
He cut a handful of tender grass and threw it in. Zhao Yeqing didn't bother to bundle up the firewood he had just chopped and returned home quickly with empty hands.
I opened the door to my grandparents' room and rummaged through the drawers and found my grandfather's ranger manual and information.
Some of them are color-printed versions at the back, with several pages yellowed and damaged. They were given to my grandfather when he first became a forest ranger.
When she was a child, she would only go down the mountain once in a long time. This basically black and white booklet was her extracurricular reading material for entertainment. Although it was printed in black and white, it had various animals printed on it. Which child doesn’t like to read books with illustrations?
When she grew up a little, although color-printed versions became available, she was able to buy more interesting comic books and novels after she went to school, so she rarely read these promotional materials.
She was able to remember that it was a musk deer thanks to her good memory from childhood. The musk deer was included in the black and white printed version, but because she couldn't see the fur color and the printing was not particularly clear, she didn't recognize it at first.
Turning over the dusty pages of the book, I came to the page about the musk deer. The text description was already a little mottled, but after careful identification, I could vaguely make out the description of the body shape and appearance. It was definitely the musk deer.
Zhao Yeqing opened the color-printed version, wanting to see if there was any clearer information about the musk deer.
...
Found it.
Musk deer like to eat twigs, grass, tree buds, moss and berries. They are timid and easily frightened. They are active at dawn and dusk and live alone. They are alert and can climb trees.
Zhao Yeqing blinked. How could such a clever animal fall into her crude trap?
According to the information, musk deer are commonly found at high altitudes, and she lives in the middle of the mountain. The highest peak of her mountain is only 1,500 meters above sea level. The Meishan Mountains have higher peaks, with the highest altitude of nearly 3,000 meters.
Logically speaking, musk deer would not run down easily, so the only possibility was that it was chased to the top of her mountain by something.
When Zhao Yeqing thought of the black crack, he understood Lin Musk's panic.
When she was a child, she saw all kinds of animals in the mountains, foxes, rabbits, pheasants... Her grandfather said that he had seen the South China tiger when he was young, but later there were many poachers, and in the few years when she just could remember, the country announced that the South China tiger was extinct in the wild.
Grandpa was very sad at the time and there was no smile on his face for many days. She didn't know why at the time, but she just saw that grandpa stayed in the woods longer every day.
Zhao Yeqing found that the color-printed version was very comprehensive. She put the black-and-white information neatly into the cabinet and took out the color-printed version to use as her forest encyclopedia.
It contains not only animals but also introductions to vegetation and minerals, all of which can be seen in the Meishan Mountains.
Confirming that it was the musk deer, Zhao Yeqing had an idea in his mind. He planned to feed it first, and then see how to rescue it after it recovered some strength.
She went out early the next morning.
It is easy to find tender sprouts in spring. Zhao Yeqing filled a backpack with two large handfuls of fresh dandelions, kept a small handful for himself as a cold dish, and picked a few bunches of loquats from the loquat tree, keeping one bunch for himself.
I eat whatever you eat. That's enough of a courtesy.
It was mainly because she was greedy.
She walked to the entrance of the cave and saw the musk deer inside with its eyes wide open and moving its body backwards. She breathed a sigh of relief and smiled, looking much more energetic than yesterday.
Its front hooves were pushing against the ground, and both hind hooves were drooping on the ground, apparently both were injured.
Zhao Yeqing threw in dandelions and loquats. The loquats scattered and rolled to the musk deer's mouth, but he didn't take any bites even though his nose moved.
She ignored it, picked up a loquat, peeled it, put it in her mouth and walked back.
The firewood we chopped yesterday has not yet been collected. It will be useless if it is left in the woods for half a month.
The forest along the mountain road leading to the path is mostly fir trees. The leaves of fir trees are somewhat similar to those of pine trees, but the leaves of pine trees are soft pine needles, while the leaves of fir trees are flat 3-5 mm wide thorns that are very painful. It was the tree she hated most when she was a child.
The leaves have cones that look like pine cones, but they do not contain delicious pine nuts. Instead, they are said to be used as medicine.
She didn't know anything about Chinese medicine, but dried cedar leaves and cones were particularly useful for starting fires.
In order to prevent her hands from being pricked when making a fire later, she separated the branches and leaves, and used the leaves to start the fire and the branches as firewood.
There was a small open space right in front of the yard. She spread the collected wet firewood and leaves on the ground, waiting for the midday sun to come out to dry them.
While the sun was still up, Zhao Yeqing went into the small vegetable garden. The tomato and eggplant seedlings that he had planted before had grown stronger, the pumpkin had sprouted tender leaves, and the loofah seedlings were looking for support points upwards. It was time to build a frame for them.
The remaining bamboo poles that had been placed in the corner had faded from green to light yellow. I picked three of the same length, tied their tops together to form a tripod, and covered the loofah seedlings inside.
The watermelon, strawberry and bitter gourd seedlings that were grown earlier have grown two cotyledons and true leaves, with a heart leaf in the middle. Now is the time to transplant them.
The germination rate was higher than she expected. Basically, all the seeds had sprouted. There were 8 watermelon seedlings, 10 strawberries, and 5 bitter gourds.
She planted three watermelons and five strawberries in the small vegetable garden and two bitter melons next to the fence. This was the limit of the small vegetable garden. She wanted to plant as much as possible in the yard instead of outside.
If animals come to steal food, the wall can protect the small vegetable garden, which is her last guarantee of food.
She transplanted the remaining seedlings to the large vegetable garden outside. After watering and fertilizing them, she remembered the compost bin she had made earlier.
It needs to be stirred with a stick after so many days. I randomly picked up a piece of wet firewood I had just chopped and opened the compost bucket. The kitchen waste inside had already rotted a little and merged with the substrate below. The smell now was not pleasant, but it didn’t matter. After it was successfully and completely decomposed, the compost would be odorless.
I have just finished tying up the loofah tripod, and only the last bamboo pole is left, which is the top part, long and thin, with a slightly drooping tip.
It is a good material for making a fishing rod.
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