My first spear is a write-off, broken into three pieces by the animal’s attack. So it goes.
With a bit of effort, I’m able to find another collection of conifer branches near the waterline. I know that I’m tempting fate to do my work here, but I do not want to carry this creature’s entire body back up the incline.
I have three long branches, easily two meters each. I arrange them in a tripod and bind them with the flexible remains of the first branch. It’s a crude tripod, but it will serve. The animal, drained of its blood, is still about 5 kg and I’m tired.
I have no idea how to clean an amphibian like a proper hunter. My movements are clumsy. I slit the creature’s belly and remove its head. These two steps remove much of the animal’s weight. With this accomplished, it is easy enough to cross thin branches under the animal’s clavicle, and use this to hang it from the top of the tripod. The animal, while ferocious, is not large. The tail coils on the ground, but most is suspended properly from the tripod.
From the head I remove the teeth. The larger teeth I use to cut the sinews of the lower legs. The meat on these legs is filthy with blood and marsh water. I do not care in the slightest. I eat my fill of the animal’s lower extremities. I then begin cutting way the other meat. I lay a large collection of palm fronds down nearby, and there I pile the animal’s “parts”.
I will need to better manage this step, if I can manage it at all. The sun is nearly halfway from the peak of the sky to the horizon. It is later day. I cannot hope to linger too long in this task, or else I will be defenseless in this marsh if the morning rains come.
With my belly full, I turn to my next point of curiosity: leather. I want to see what can be done with this leather. I can’t hope to stretch or tan or cure it right now, but may be too thin to be practical. Still, I want it.
I look at my pile of meat and bones, at my tripod, and at my leather.
It’s nice to want things. It’s infinitely more challenging to keep them. The waters will drive away everything in front of me. Even if the beasts don’t get this free meat, the insects will plant their larvae in it. Even if they don’t, it will still spoil. In front of me is what I will conservatively say is three days portable food. The bones are more important than the meat. I can make things from the bones. Bones are difficult to carry. They all have to be bundled together. With all this said, I can’t just carry the carcass all of the way up the mountain to my cave, which is the only place that I feel safe from the rain.
I reach my decision just as the sun is reaching the horizon. I am ranging. I cannot return yet to my cave.
I bundle my meat and bones in the still-wet skin of the animal. I place a layer of fern stems between the two. I hope that this will provide some structural protection for the new bundle. I bind this bundle with the animal’s intestines. It weighs about 2 kg, and is easily carried over my pack.
Before I leave, I jam the tripod’s legs further into the mud. With some luck, they will stay put at least for the next few days. I place the animal’s skull atop the tripod, my first marker and hopefully, a useful way of keeping my location as I explore.
I’m tired. I’m heading up the mountain to the compass rock.