Hunting while day reigns feels like an exercise in futility. Too broad, too solid, the tom's sheer breadth is a herald of his own presence under the sun's rays, a tribute to everything that stealth is not. Half the time stumbling awkwardly into ice-enamelled divots of earth, the other half cursing the shrubs that keep snagging at his paws, the whole while huffing a frosted mist in exasperation. It's hard not to sulk. Come nightfall, and the picture is entirely different; but at this very moment, Smoky might as well just be shouting his intentions from a mountaintop.
He'd love to tell himself he'll find his groove in this new territory. Find his footing, so to speak, so that he may tread more than a fox-length in silence. The thought refuses to settle, elusive as a feather in a blustering win. Pouty like a kit, double as hungry, his mood worsens the longer he wanders the bog. This place is far denser and thicker than the colony's surrounding wood. More humid. Rife with unfamiliar foliage. And yet, not a single squirrel, hare or grouse in sight.
An odour breaks his brooding once he shins down a dip in terrain. Musk. Decay. His snout follows its source, the rest of him trotting alongside, and brings him to a slumped creature in a shallow pool of ice-cold water. In its brackish liquid are thick white spikes, long and narrow and fringed. What a bizarre, gangly creature. Brows arch high, mouth pulled taut. Fascinated and wary all at once, and stupefied above all else, the tabby inches closer while trying to figure out the strange anatomy.
"What're you, then?"* Smoky mutters to the stiff carrion. Its head is bowed halfway into the waterline, mouth propped open in its desperate bid for a final breath. "Beaver? Wait, no-" It didn't have the tell-tale tail. Couldn't be a raccoon with mange, could it?
Whatever it is, it's stuck in the bogmuck and has a decent weight to its torso. Cautious paws deign to enter the water. With his nose, he presses at the one patch of spineless flesh to test the integrity of the creature's soft-looking underbelly. To his delight, the give is a telling sign of edibility. "Eh, food's food," is all the thought that's given to the situation's peculiarity, and, without any further fanfare, Smoky happily tears into his meal.
* Porcupine
@vampire