From Robinson Crusoe

Chapter 86 Annihilation
Wild rabbits usually go out to forage after dark, and retreat into burrows to rest late at night when predators such as wild cats and birds of prey are active.

But this activity pattern does not apply to all hares.

When it is almost dawn, when hunters return to their nests with either prey or an empty stomach, some brave rabbits will seize this brief period of safety to eat in the woods.

Most of the time, these bold rabbits are not in danger.

But there are always exceptions to everything.

When some restless rabbits anger Chen Zhou, the entire rabbit family will have to pay the price, and those rabbits that are still active outside will be the first to suffer.

……

Lai Fu remembered the smell of rabbit fur and avoided any more mistakes. He quickly helped Chen Zhou find the first rabbit.

The rabbit heard the rustling of grass leaves from afar and ran away, with Lai Fu chasing after it.

Its loyalty is worthy of recognition, but its body structure is similar to that of a guard dog. It is strong and powerful, has a strong bite force, and is alert in temperament. In terms of speed and agility, it cannot be compared with short-distance running champions such as greyhounds.

Unless the rabbit panics and hides in the bushes or does not notice the trees in front of it and disrupts its escape, it will be difficult for Lai Fu to gain the upper hand in this "Speed Race".

The fierce barking of dogs and the chaotic footsteps disturbed the tranquility of the forest.

Chen Zhou took out a lighter, lit the fuse, and trotted in the direction Lai Fu pointed.

After a busy night, the birds that had just returned to their nests poked their heads out with anger at being disturbed.

Suddenly, there was a loud gunshot, and they were so startled that they hurriedly flew away from the tree holes and bird nests, flapping their wings as if they were raising a cloud of dark leaves.

As smoke rose, Chen Zhou continued to load ammunition.

In the early morning, in the woodland environment fifty meters away, there were many obstacles and the vision was also disturbed.

Even a well-trained shooter would have difficulty hitting a small, fast-moving target with one shot.

What's more, he was using an antique weapon, the matchlock gun, which had poor accuracy.

This shot was not to kill the rabbit, but to announce his arrival.

……

Starting from the early morning of the 27th, the hare's leisurely days came to an end.

A scary monster wearing a wide-brimmed hat and a dog with a keen sense of smell patrols and clears out the forest all day long.

It was fine during the day, but the closer it got to the time when rabbits were most active and were foraging, the more the horrible monster would try to kill rabbits in all kinds of ways.

Most of the bushes in the forest that could provide shelter for rabbits were cut down, and small tree holes and earth holes were filled with cold water and dug up. Many baby rabbits, still in their cradles, were drowned or dug out and became snacks for the dog.

The roar of muskets became more frequent, and the bloody skinning ceremonies were held more and more frequently.

At the edge of the field, the bare rabbit flags were once again hung with rabbit skins of various colors, like a wall built with corpses, intimidating any rabbits that dared to approach.

Only in the woodlands near the fields did the number of rabbit activities decrease significantly, and the wild rabbits that could occasionally be seen at dusk were no longer seen.

For the timid and low-IQ hare, the level of terror here quickly rose to a level that was incomparable even to the depths of the jungle.

You know, in the deep forests, in addition to wild cats that feed on rabbits, there are also venomous snakes, pythons, birds of prey and other predators.

But now, even if they were added together, they could not cause such a large-scale and efficient massacre of the hare family.

……

By May 5, Chen Zhou had killed nearly two hundred wild rabbits.

His methods include but are not limited to rabbit traps, tunnel traps, digging rabbit holes, pouring boiling water into rabbit holes, gun hunting, releasing dogs, slingshots...

So many rabbit skins were peeled and hung that a foul smell lingered around the fields all day long, attracting many scavenger insects that flew around the rabbit skins.

Fearing a waste of resources, after the field was filled with rabbit skin flags, Chen Zhou smashed the rabbit's skull, took out the brain and began to dry and tan the rabbit fur.

Although these furs may not be needed in the short term, it is always a good idea to store more materials, as it will be too late to make them when they are needed.

Fur drying racks that match the size of rabbit skins are neatly arranged on the platform.

The skinned rabbit carcasses are also decomposed, with the hearts removed and fed to dogs, and the internal organs that pose a risk of parasites thrown into the toilet as compost.

The bones of the better meat were removed, chopped into minced meat, fried into rabbit meatballs, put into wooden barrels, and stored in a dark place.

In the first few days, Chen Zhou added some salt to the meat filling and ate it as a snack.

After getting tired of eating it, he simply kneaded the meat filling into long strips and made it into "salt-free and healthy" high-quality pure rabbit meat ham sausage, which he fed to Lai Fu and the others as cat and dog food to supplement protein.

Little Huihui lay at home all day, and for no apparent reason he had been eating more. His weight was still increasing, and he was already developing into a spherical shape. In other words, he was already half a sphere.

I couldn't understand how a cat I raised on an isolated island could grow into the modern fat cat it is.

In May, Chen Zhou began to deliberately control Xiao Huihui's food intake and drove him out of the cave to let him move around more so that he could lose weight. Unfortunately, the effect was not good.

It is warmer outside the cave than inside during the dry season. This guy can sleep outside away from home. Without being disturbed by Ti Zi and Lai Fu, he may even sleep more soundly.

Every time he saw it failing to live up to expectations, Chen Zhou felt that good employees like Tizi were more valuable.

If he had not rescued Xiao Huihui from the boat and cured him bit by bit until now, he really wanted to drive him out of the house and let him experience the hardships and twists of life in the wild for a while and feel how cruel this world is.

……

The daily morning and evening rabbit extermination activities yielded less and less.

Looking at the dozens of rabbit skins on the platform and eating rabbit meatballs, Chen Zhou's anger finally subsided and he shifted his attention to other things.

……

Looking back on these 12 days, the time spent outside of clearing out the hares can be divided into two main parts.

The first part was to take care of the crops transplanted from the river valley plains, especially what looked like wild pepper plants and mountain celery.

In order to better observe the condition of these plants, he not only installed windows on the top of the sunroom, but also laid a piece of plastic cloth on it to facilitate the control of light intensity and area.

The plants were planted separately in carefully selected fertile soil in the sun room, and three buckets of water were placed in the room.

With nothing else to do, Chen Zhou even designed a small irrigation system made of hollow wooden tubes for the sunroom, but he has not started to make it yet.

Every morning after walking his rabbit trap, he would go to the cabin to have breakfast, carrying his trophies and Lai Fu, and take care of the crops that had come from afar.

Sugarcane and aloe vera, two plants with tenacious vitality, did not enjoy the sunroom and were planted by Chen Zhou beside the mountain stream.

Maybe it’s because there is not enough light in the forest or there are too many plants and the competition is too strong. They are obviously not able to adapt well. Although they are not dead, they look unhappy and listless.

Considering the health of sugarcane and aloe vera, Chen Zhou plans to cut down some large trees that block the sunlight.

A sugarcane field and an aloe vera field were cleared next to the mountain stream to grow sugarcane and aloe vera, but due to time constraints, this has not yet been put into action.

Grapes, tobacco, suspected wild peppers and suspected mountain celery were planted in the sun room with more fertile soil, and their performances were different. Grapes and tobacco were obviously more adapted to this semi-sealed environment with high temperature and no wind, especially the grapevines, which grew well.

The peppers are in pretty good shape, not adapting as quickly as the grapes and tobacco, nor wilting.

The mountain celery was the worst, with some plants wilting and root rot, and the few that were still alive looked sickly, like short-lived ghosts.

Chen Zhou tried to control the amount of water for the mountain celery or change the soil, but to no avail.

It is estimated that within a few days, all these mountain celery will be wiped out.

If he were to ask himself honestly, he felt that he had observed and cared for these wild plants carefully enough, but he lacked some understanding of plants.

Thinking that next time he went to the river valley plain, he should carefully study what kind of soil was needed for the mountain celery to grow and how much rainfall it could get, so as to avoid similar situations from happening again, he no longer tried to save the remaining few mountain celery -

The acclimatization is so severe and the cause cannot be found. If you move again, you may die faster.

I always go to the wooden cabin every morning and evening, without fail.

Chen Zhou spends most of the rest of his time at the beach.

As salt was in short supply, he devoted most of his energy to digging salt ponds and canals.

Under the scorching sun, he dug a rectangular pit 4 meters long and 3 meters wide on the beach. Next to the pit was another crystallization pool that was one circle smaller.

Of the two pits, the larger one is the evaporation pond, which can evaporate most of the water by introducing seawater and exposing it to the sun.

After that, pour the dried water into the crystallization pool and continue to expose it to the sun, and a saturated solution of salt will be obtained, and salt crystals will slowly precipitate. The remaining liquid is the "bitter brine".

At first, Chen Zhou naively thought that as long as he chose a good location, avoided interference from the tide, dug two pits, and introduced seawater, he would be done.

After digging the pit, he found that drying salt from seawater was far from as simple as he had imagined.

The first problem is that seawater will seep into the sand, so the inside of the canal, the evaporation pond and the surface of the crystallization pond must be waterproofed.

In order to achieve this function, he moved the remaining cement and used a batch of stone bricks and wooden boards. It took him nine days to make water-proof channels, evaporation pools and crystallization pools.

Later, he discovered that if the canal was not equipped with a switch system, seawater would overflow the simple stone brick blockage in the canal during high tide and flow into the evaporation pond.

Seawater that has been left out to dry for a while will be damaged.

In response to this, Chen Zhou's solution was to dig a foundation outside the canal, build a semicircular moisture-proof wall, and set up an artificial sluice to completely block the intrusion of sea water.

After these two problems were resolved, this simple salt drying field was able to operate smoothly.

On the day of completion, standing in the woods by the sea, looking at the eye-catching salt drying field on the beach from afar, Chen Zhou suddenly realized that this thing was so conspicuous, it would not attract the attention of the cannibalistic natives...

Looking at the equally large cutting field on the other side, he shook his head, knowing that he had no choice.

It is not advisable to hide your illness and avoid seeing a doctor.

Besides, all the cement had been used up, so even if he wanted to build another salt drying field in a hidden place, there was no suitable material.

The natural material white mud does not have the same strong waterproofness and corrosion resistance as cement. It will disintegrate after being soaked in seawater for a few days, producing a large amount of impurities that pollute the salt solution.

……

The new crops and the salt drying field are two major projects worth mentioning, but they are not all of Chen Zhou's life.

The storm has long passed, and the earthquake has been weathered.

Thereafter, there was no more excessive pressure for a long time, and he lost that kind of urgency in doing things. As long as conditions permitted, he tried his best to pursue perfection.

For example, the small irrigation pipes that are still under planning in the sun room and the large completed moisture-proof wall surrounding the beach are both manifestations of this attitude.

In the past, he would definitely use a more labor-saving and quicker method to replace it, even if the quick method could not last long.

The low-pressure environment gives Chen Zhou more choices.

When he was tired, he could take half a day off and go fishing with Lai Fu, or go fishing with his own fishing rod.

When he is bored, he can take his notebook and draw a picture on the top of a mountain, at the seaside, or in the forest, or draw with framed corrugated paper, and then hang it on the wall to enrich the decoration in the cave.

Sometimes, he would pick up a project that he had put aside due to time constraints, boil a pot of water to fumigate wood strips, and study the process of making wheels;

Or laying a few more floors for the bedrooms, building an exterior wall, chiseling a small model of the arched load-bearing beam in preparation for future construction;

I would go to the forest, pick up an axe and chop down a few big trees, until I was exhausted and lay down in the fallen leaves to catch my breath...

Worried that his language skills would deteriorate with a long life of loneliness, he would climb up the sunny slope, stand on the ridge, face the wind, and recite poetry aloud facing the sea in the northeast.

Many of the ancient poems I recited as a child are deeply engraved in my mind. When I blurt out the poems, they fall from the sky and fall into the surging waves with the sea breeze, which has a unique charm.

……

All the work was progressing in an orderly manner, and overall there were not too many setbacks.

On May 5, when Chen Zhou went to the cave to add salt to the goat family, he found that the mother goat's belly was slightly bulging, which made him even more delighted.

His small flock was finally going to have a new member, and the livestock industry had taken a crucial step forward, which was worth celebrating.

However, in addition to the good news that the female goat was pregnant, Chen Zhou also discovered that the half-grown lamb was very hostile to its cheap father, and always used its small horns that had not grown very long to butt the male goat.

If it weren't for the goat's foot that limited its speed and attack power, this ignorant little thing would have been injured long ago.

When mediating the "father-son discord" issue, Chen Zhou realized that the root cause of the fight between the two rams was the competition for a mate.

The lamb, which is gradually maturing sexually, has its brain controlled by the hormones secreted in its body, and has developed unhealthy thoughts about its biological mother.

Chen Zhou doesn't care about ethical issues within the flock if it does not affect the quality of offspring.

However, inbreeding increases the probability of genetic diseases and deformities, and allowing this behavior to continue will inevitably shake the foundation of the animal husbandry industry.

Chen Zhou is not a short-sighted person. After discovering this phenomenon, he immediately took out a hemp rope, led the little male goat to the cave and tied it up. He found a razor, alcohol, cloth tape and other tools and performed a "egg removal surgery" on it.

……

Unfortunately, the "patient" was too old and had already matured when he underwent the surgery, and the "surgeon" Dr. Chen lacked experience.

A major mistake occurred during the operation - Dr. Chen's hand shook and he cut into a suspected artery.

The patient, who had not received anesthesia, screamed in pain and accidentally kicked the surgeon.

The subsequent scenes were extremely bloody.

After many unsuccessful attempts to stop the bleeding, Dr. Chen, who was in charge of the operation, could only stab the patient to death with tears in his eyes, and then skillfully dissected, cooked and fried the patient's body.

That night, the smell wafting from the cave was very fragrant. The heartbroken surgeon, Dr. Chen, turned his sadness into appetite and ate a big meal.

　感谢：肥宅心狠骚、花夜酱、无言论诉、书友尾号7657、莲非莲、巡礼者、包子没肉馒头夹心、三流幻想家、汤圆和包子、拖去喂狗、书友尾号5501、读者尾号7564、火鬼、理想有如太阳、书友尾号3476、电子羊的梦魇、龙飞鱼、今年今日、书友尾号0220、想吃紫柚还是蟠桃、起名总重名、老土熊、梓琛AC、荒野的奇迹之风、考前通宵、孔龙大哥、装睡的人、书友尾号2859、冠心病患者、吓！哈、书友尾号5875、永爱九织、圣光大浪、倪杰符、chocobox、书友尾号5996、大数据总给我推送美女、鸭油、书友尾号3964、AAABC、书友尾号7594、书友尾号7096、Mr七月、嗨灬boy、书友尾号0551、星辉映剑影、帝波罗神、袁某人、凯强、撞钟的和尚、书友尾号4238、如梦似幻cD、贵桂龙、九藤虫王、书友尾号1551的月票，感谢各位支持！

　　
　
(End of this chapter)