Chapter 225 The Lone Warrior in the Desert
At this moment, a caracal that was squatting and watching like a camera suddenly used its claws to pull at Xu Ying's trouser legs.
[Stationmaster Xiao Xu, look, there are fish living in the desert!]
Xu Ying looked in the direction the caracal pointed and saw a creature that looked like a catfish crawling on the dry sand, swaying its body from side to side, leaving behind traces of sand.
"It's the Desert Catfish!"
The desert catfish is a very rare fish that can "walk" on land.
They have powerful fins on their limbs that can serve as tentacles for crawling in the sand, and they are extremely drought-resistant.
When the waters they live in dry up, other aquatic creatures face the dilemma of dying of dehydration, but the desert catfish has thick skin and flesh and is drought-resistant. They will "pupa" their bodies in the sand and move forward to find new water sources.
Xu Ying hurried to the front of the desert catfish. This guy was very sensitive to water sources and might know what happened here.
[Save me! Save me!]
The desert catfish's voice was as thin as a thread. [The river dried up just after I laid my eggs.]
Xu Ying immediately squatted down, took out a water bottle from the first aid kit, and carefully poured clean water on the armored catfish's body covered with sand and dust.
The cool water made it tremble violently.
[My eggs are still in the sand of the riverbed]
The armored catfish struggled to lift its pectoral fins and pointed at the dry riverbed in the distance. "If I can't take them with me, they'll die of dehydration."
Its tail fin has begun to turn white, a sign of severe dehydration.
The caracal anxiously circled around the armored catfish, occasionally touching its body with its claws.
"Hold on!" Xu Ying quickly took out the portable water oxygen tank and put the desert catfish into the tank.
Xu Ying picked up the water tank and said to the caracal, "Go call the gerbil team and bring the digging tools. We have to race against time!"
Seeing that the situation was critical, the gerbil boss called many of his brothers. One group notified other small animals in the desert to go to the rescue station to drink water, and another group waited on Xu Ying's motorcycle, ready to be on call at any time.
The catfish weakly shook its body: [There is a mark on the riverbed, under the reed roots in the southeast direction.] Then it collapsed to the bottom of the tank.
Xu Ying picked up the water tank and walked towards the desert catfish.
On the riverbed in the distance, the scorching sun was burning the cracked soil, and a few withered reeds could be vaguely seen swaying in the heat wave.
Xu Ying knelt on one knee on the dry riverbed, sweat dripping down her chin onto the sand and evaporating without a trace in an instant.
She narrowed her eyes and reached out to push away the hot sand on the surface.
The sand burned her fingertips red, but she didn't care.
Suddenly, she stopped moving.
"This is."
Xu Ying exclaimed, "Found it!"
Beneath the sand, a few crystal clear fish eggs are emitting a faint pearly luster. Their surface is covered with a special layer of mucus, which reflects tiny spots of light in the sunlight.
She squinted her eyes and looked along the reflective egg cases - they actually formed a clear line, extending all the way into the distance!
The caracal came over and tilted his head: [How come these fish eggs are arranged so neatly?]
Xu Ying's eyes narrowed. "Desert catfish lay their eggs at the junction of moist sand layers. They can sense the humidity of the groundwater... This line is the direction of groundwater flow!"
She immediately stood up and walked quickly along the fish egg markings.
The gerbil team was also brought over and followed closely behind, occasionally using their claws to dig up the sand to confirm the direction of the mark.
—until the markings suddenly broke off.
Xu Ying squatted on the Gobi Desert, and the moment his fingertips touched the sand, he noticed something strange.
The ground before her was artificially filled, and the surface sand was loose and dry, completely different from the surrounding naturally formed hard crust. She frowned, dug her fingers into the sand, and suddenly lifted it up -
“Crash!”
The covering sand collapsed, revealing a deep pit with a diameter of nearly one meter, with clear shovel marks still remaining on the pit wall.
What’s even more terrifying is that deep at the bottom of the pit, a shocking crack runs across the soil, and groundwater is silently flowing out from the crack.
The jerboa popped its head out of her backpack, its black bean-like eyes wide open, its fur standing on end as it screamed: [Who did this?!]
The caracal squatted not far away, tilting its head to watch for a long time, and finally reacted, its ears twitching: [Who broke my kettle?]
Xu Ying's face darkened.
She grabbed a handful of sand and threw it into the air.
The fine sand drew strange tracks in the hot wind, as if being pulled by some invisible force, all drifting towards the northeast.
"Underground airflow," she whispered, her heart sinking. "There's a crack in the aquifer, and the water is being drained away."
This was no natural collapse – someone had damaged the aquifer!
Xu Ying took a step back and stepped on a thin steel pile, which made a loud noise.
A desert lizard emerged from the sand, its scales burnt yellow and its tail broken.
It breathed a sigh of relief when it saw the work ID card with the five-star red flag hanging around Xu Ying's neck.
[Great! Are you the desert animal rescuer they were talking about?]
The desert lizard was spitting out its tongue rapidly: [Have you seen my child?]
Xu Ying was stunned: "Your child is missing?"
The lizard twitched its tail anxiously: [It was in the nest yesterday, but it suddenly disappeared this morning!]
It suddenly approached the steel stake at the edge of the pit, its tongue trembling rapidly. "That's the smell! Those two-legged beasts used this thing to make strange noises, and all my people were led away!"
"Vibration trap..." Xu Ying's pupils shrank.
She had heard that some poaching gangs would take advantage of lizards' sensitivity to vibrations of a certain frequency by driving steel stakes into the sand, using the vibrations to attract the lizards to gather and then catch them all in one fell swoop.
The steel pile in front of us probably hit the weakest part of the aquifer, causing the groundwater layer to rupture!
As the pet market has grown in recent years, some people are no longer satisfied with raising cats and dogs, and like to raise exotic pets such as snakes, lizards and spiders.
Some rare desert lizards are sold at extremely high prices in the market, ranging from several thousand to tens of thousands of yuan each. Individuals with special body colors or mutations are more sought after. For example, albino lizards can be sold for tens of thousands of yuan.
Lizard skins are also used to make leather goods for luxury brands, while dried lizard products are smuggled into Southeast Asia.
Such a big mess was probably caused by these money-hungry poachers. Xu Ying clenched his fists.
Fix the leak first, then arrest the person!
Xu Ying called the desert rescue station's landline.
After about thirty seconds, the call was answered.
But the sound coming from the other end of the phone was not human voice, but bird chirping——
The gray drongo, which is good at imitating the calls of various birds, has now settled down in Xu Ying's desert rescue station for the winter.
It has now become the little housekeeper of the rescue station.
Her duty is to look after the Niya black chickens raised by Xu Ying, and to notify them when there are birds of prey circling in the sky, that an air raid is coming, and to quickly return to the chicken coop!
In addition, with its sensitive hearing, it also works part-time answering the landline phone at the rescue station, helping Xu Ying "forward notifications" to vultures and other birds.
The gray curly-tail chirped: "Master Xu, what's the matter?"
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