Wen Qian sat on the concrete slab, listening to the sounds of the animals inside, not knowing at the moment how to kill the prey and take it out.
If she lets the prey starve to death, how long will it take? What if the prey gets taken away during the long night? She can't just stay here and watch it every day, and the most important thing is that it will make the animal lean from hunger, right?
If she uses a crossbow or bow and arrow, the wild boar at the bottom of the pit seems to have a place to hide due to the angle. Moreover, the stones above, even if she rearranges them to expose an edge, can only reveal a slit on one side.
Wen Qian recalled the slope and angle of the pit she dug and felt that this method was not very suitable either.
There is also the problem that a large amount of fresh blood may attract other wild animals, which would not be good.
As for using a gun, Wen Qian knew that after the bullet goes in, it will be difficult to clean up and there will be a lot of fresh blood, so she decided to drown this pig.
Finally, Wen Qian rearranged the stone slabs and inserted a water pipe, gradually pouring water into it, worrying that the concrete slabs might have problems, so she also pressed a large stone on top.
After making sure the prey could not escape from anywhere, Wen Qian started pouring water again.
After the water was full, Wen Qian waited for half an hour, and everything became quiet.
In fact, there had been no sound for a long time, but Wen Qian waited a little longer just to be sure.
When the half-hour timer ended, Wen Qian excitedly removed the stone slabs and the large stone, then used a rope to pull the wild boar out of the pit to the edge.
After confirming the prey's death, she stored it in her space, then began to clean up the stones and vegetables around the trap.
She was so happy today that she didn't have time to clean up the standing water inside, so the trap became a water pit that couldn't be seen from the outside.
Wen Qian put up a warning sign, and since she had a harvest, she wanted to go home, so she didn't want to do anything else and hurriedly went back.
She was really excited now, her hands were shaking, and she couldn't hold back the smile on her face, feeling like a blind cat that had stumbled upon a dead mouse, and there wouldn't be such good luck in the future.
But one good thing is enough, what else does she need?
When she got home, Wen Qian did not immediately take out the prey, as it would be difficult to clean up the drowned wild boar.
Wen Qian was thinking about a problem, which is whether killing the pig and cutting the meat here would attract carnivorous animals.
After all, some animals have very sensitive noses. They can smell the scent of blood from miles away.
So Wen Qian decided to store the thing in her space first, and take it out to dissect it later when the time is right. The meat has already been stored in the space, and everything in the space remains in the same state as when it was put in.
Even if she takes the pig out later, she can drain the blood to maintain the quality.
The calm Wen Qian gave herself some other food as a supplementary meal that day. She estimated in her mind that this wild boar should weigh more than 200 pounds.
However, she had never eaten wild boar meat before. In the peaceful years before the natural disaster, the wild boar was still a protected animal.
It seems that the regulations on animals are different in different countries.
In her area, wild boars only started to become a nuisance and descend the mountains to damage crops a few years ago, when the ecological environment was well protected.
Now it shouldn't be the case, as daring to descend the mountains to destroy people's food supply means going down the mountain to deliver food.
The previous wild chickens and wild boars, which were protected animals, should now be quite dangerous, as they are the primary prey that people are looking for.
The next day, Wen Qian went back to the trap and used a bucket to scoop out most of the water, leaving a shallow bottom, then set up the trap outside just as before.
Since the trap took so long to dig, and she had already caught prey, she would be quite happy to check on it regularly from now on.
Although there was no harvest in the following days, the joyful Wen Qian who had caught that wild boar would not be discouraged, and she also harvested some other vegetables.
In September, it was time to dig potatoes, as the weather forecast indicated that winter would come early, and the temperature would drop and it would snow soon, so the potatoes couldn't grow much longer.
Therefore, Wen Qian decided to dig them all up to prevent them from being buried in the snow and spoiling if left too long.
In September, Wen Qian lay in the field digging potatoes. The potatoes grown here were not very large, at least not as big as the ones she had originally bought in the vegetable market.
Perhaps it was because the growing time was not long enough. The largest ones were about the size of her fist, and the smaller ones were really like marbles.
Even so, Wen Qian was extremely careful when digging, not missing a single small potato. After clearing a small plot, she would sift through it again, then bury the kitchen waste she had previously collected in her space into the soil.
By the time she planted again after a long winter, it should have become fertilizer.
Previously, Wen Qian was worried that she didn't have enough fertilizer, so in addition to the limited farmyard manure from the toilet, she also dug up the sedimentary river mud from the small river.
She usually doesn't just casually throw away the kitchen waste she handles, including eggshells, but stores them in her space.
Because she knows that some wild animals will also rummage through the trash cans, so she tries to avoid giving any attraction or curiosity to the animals around her living area.
By the end of September, it was already winter. This was the third winter she had spent in Xia Province.
The first winter, she had just arrived in Xia Province and was only looking for a place to build a house and get through the winter.
The second winter was the first winter after the volcanic eruption, when the whole world was in a panic and no one knew what the future would be like.
Wen Qian felt that the sword that had been hanging over her head had finally fallen.
Now in the third winter, the situation is clearly getting worse, but this year people have made great changes.
When the environment undergoes major changes, some people choose to end their lives, and some who originally thought they couldn't survive or couldn't imagine how to get through it, still made it.
Of course, this adaptation is definitely forced by circumstances.
Wen Qian no longer worries so much, although she is still cautious, she is not as anxious as before.
After Wen Qian set up the trap for the last time, she would not come to check on it regularly, as it was too far away and too cold in the snowy weather, and she didn't want to go out.
Based on her understanding of this area, in winter there is nothing here except cold winds and blown sand, so Wen Qian felt that even if there was a trap, there would be no prey.
Before the heavy snow arrived, Wen Qian had one more important task, which was to chop trees and stack firewood.
Although she had accumulated a lot of firewood before, she didn't want to use the ones already stored in her space.
In the new winter, she must store a new batch, and then use from this batch, and make sure the amount put in is much more than the amount taken out.
Therefore, the firewood she had accumulated from her hometown in An Province still had some left.
For Wen Qian, when she was looking for a location, if there was not enough wood, there should at least be enough coal, so that she could have heat and cook.
She chose the trees to be cut down and laid them down in place, waiting for them to dry a bit before collecting them. During this time, Wen Qian also tried to plant some seedlings, generally planting them on the edge of the forest.
The small saplings she transplanted last year had grown a bit, but the trees in the highland area seem to grow very slowly, unlike the fast-growing trees she used to plant in her hometown.
