Rork, Rat, and Urist headed back into the brushwork afterward looking at wild animal trails while watching their surroundings. The time was close to when they decided to check the squirrel traps to see if they caught anything. The only thing Urist was displeased about was the unusually stoic Rork and Rat had their heads in the clouds dreaming over one thing.

Woozoo Tea!

The aroma and tang of the tea had entranced them somewhat fiercely. It took a while for Urist to snap the two hardy dwarfs out of their stupor full of fantasies. Soon through the three reached the field of where they set up the squirrel traps and started checking the cords to see how many they captured.

It wasn’t a surprise to Urist that some of these traps had caught some squirrels. These little ones were lazy creatures so they ran right up the trapped log hanging themselves. Just from a glance, they had gotten three squirrels with ease. And judging by how many were still jumping around the trees, they could harvest this area for quite a while before they had to stop and let the population bounce back.

Removing the squirrels and resetting the traps deciding to check them once more in the afternoon. In good spirits, Urist asked Rat to head back to camp and start preparing the squirrels with Uria’s help reading through Survival Preparing book.

With that settled, Urist and Rork headed off to where they had set up the deer traps to see if they caught anything. Unfortunately, none of the traps got triggered so they headed over to check the hare traps. By good fortune, they caught a hare in one of their traps, it was the color brown with beady black eyes and thin-haired for the season.

Urist smiled and picked up the trap with the hare inside and headed back home. He hoped one day to make a hare farm and have a steady supply of hares to eat. If they could gather around 20 males and females they could keep the gene pool healthy and reduce hereditary disease.

Heading back to home Urist deposited the hare into its new home and checked on how the dissection of the squirrels went. Since it was their first time the hide of the first squirrel turned into shreds and the meat ruined.

Fortunately, Uria and Rat grew more competent on their second try and didn’t ruin the meat wasn’t that terrible and the hide was serviceable. Their third try showed amazing progress though after learning from their mistakes as the hide and meat turned out to be in good condition.

From the hides, 2 and 3 were useable in making hide glue so Urist got to work. Grabbing some bamboo Urist headed off to the river. As he knew before making hide glue the first step was to soak the hide in cold water for a few days.

So the best idea would be to use rocks to hold the hides in place and use the bamboo to mark the area where he placed them. When finished setting up the soak Urist turned his focus to the dwarfs huddled around the cage that held the hare with curiosity.

Seeing how scared the hare was acting Urist got some of the carrots they gathered and placed them inside the pen. He shooed the dwarfs away to allow the hare some space, heaven forbid the little creature having a heart attack.

Watching the little creature nibble the carrots cutely made Ursit smile warmly, ‘Ah get fat quickly and have many babies.'

Unfortunately for the hare, his thoughts weren't kind-hearted in thinking about keeping this hare as a pet. They needed to eat and as long as they fed these hares they’d have a steady source of meat.

He only hoped they would find more in the coming days to get a good supply of them. With wishful thoughts, he walked over to the smoking rack to watch the squirrel meat cooking. He knew it would be a tiring process of learning how to correctly smoke meat on an open fire. Make the fire too big and it’ll cook regularly, to small and the smoke would fully dry it.

It would be better if we just had a smokehouse, sighed Urist.

To make such a building required a few things such as a place to feed the fire container and allow the smoke to flow through the pipe and into the building and allow some airflow. Of course, such a building would take a lot of manpower to build making the idea a pipe dream like booze.

Besides we don’t need it right now. We are only smoking some of the food caught today while the rest will be turned into a soup for eating.

Thinking about dinner today got Urist mouth-watering. Dinner would consist of minced squirrel brain matter meatballs; fish soup seasoned with woozoo flower to give it a tangy flavor and a side of boiled snails.

Even though snails were worth a small amount of nutrition, they were very plentiful along the shore. From science class, he had once he remembered from his teacher that the shells held Calcium carbonate if ground up they could use it in a few ways.

Calcium carbonate is another form of limestone and could be made into agricultural lime by milling and be used to help raise the PH level in the soil. It was also would provide a great source of nutrients for the plant and improves the uptake of major plants nutrients such as nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium hidden away in the soil or so what his teacher said.

The power of agricultural lime must not be underestimated once said his teacher, such was the case for Brazil in their Green Revolution. The soil in the 1960s was too acidic and poor in nutrients to farm in raise cattle, however into the 1960’s vast amounts of agricultural lime was poured into the fields for years the amount being 14-16 million tons a year into the fields all the way into the 1990s.

Then it increased once again to 25 million tonnes in 2003 and 2004. With so much of the stuff in the soil now Brazil soil became a powerhouse becoming the second-biggest soybean exporter in the world and thanks to all the calcium in the soil another factor of how monstrous the soil became Brazil became the biggest exporter of beef and poultry.

One should not underestimate such a magical ingredient of science his teacher said before sending him into the hall for doodling in his notebook. Urist never thought such a humiliating memory would serve him with useful information. So before eating, he asked everyone to pick out the shells after eating and to place them in a wooden bowl.

Finished eating and doing tasks around the base Urist figured it was time to head out one more time to check the traps and see if they caught anything. Rork and Rat although they didn’t need to decide to tag along in case Urist needed the muscle.