I am Earthman
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– And, how will we save them until winter?
– Very simple. We will drown green herbs and worms in fat, they will be preserved there, and root crops will be preserved anyway. We just need to stock up a lot.
– And, where can we get root vegetables?
– Down there, along the stream of the spring, the root crops grow there and are just beginning to ripen.
Adam suddenly remembered the big ants and asked Eve;
– Oh, can I eat ants?
– I don't know, I've never tried it. Even if they can be eaten, I will never be able and will not want to eat them. Because they are harmless to us, and they are also my friends. When I was left alone, they were the only living beings around, with whom I communicated, talked, played and felt not alone here.
Adam felt uneasy, not only because he asked Eve such a question. Ants were the first living creatures that he saw after returning to Earth from a foreign land. He remembered that when he saw them, how happy he was, as they were the first messengers who gave him hope for the revival of life on the planet. How inexcusably quickly he forgot this. Therefore, as if in a guilty tone, he answered not only Eve, but also the ants, too, with only one word;
– I'm sorry.
– I didn't understand why you're asking for forgiveness?
– Yes, I just did it, he replied in a guilty voice.
Part 2. Lessons on survival and life
After lunch that same day, Adam continued to read the manuscript.
The author wrote: After seeing and realizing that there was no way we could move a large stone, we mentally depressed went back down to the lake and came to our temporary camp. Everyone was silent, because they understood the difficulty and hopelessness of our situation in which we found ourselves. But still, the optimism and the idea that we would somehow soon get out of here did not leave us all, because we were young, strong, our bodies were strong and none of us wanted to stay in the captivity of the cave and die just like that. Evening came, then night. Worried, either by our appearance on the shore of the lake, or for other reasons related to the disaster, the inhabitants of the lake occasionally made whining, plaintive sounds. These sounds were sometimes joined by the warning sounds of our smartphones that the batteries in them were running low. Being psychologically depressed and unsure of the future, sitting in pitch darkness, pressing our bodies against each other, we spent another night in a cave on the shore of the lake.
The next morning, we woke up, looked around. There are no changes around. Only on the island in the middle of the lake, we saw a pandemonium of amphibious animals, similar to seals, but with a slightly elongated neck and a small head, from a distance similar to a cat's head. Now, after we had accepted our situation a little, everyone began to feel hungry, which was further reminded by the sounds of rumbling in our intestines. The water also ran out. Without food and water, we will not last long, we need to get food and water. There is water in the lake, but is it suitable for consumption? After cutting off the neck of one of the plastic bottles, they made a bucket out of it and filled it with water. The water was warm, as in the tropical zones of the Earth. At first, none of us dared to drink. But the use of this water was in this case the only real and non-alternative necessity for us, and in order to survive in the future, we had to somehow get out of the situation. After asking the others to refrain from drinking water a little, I tried the water first. The water was not salty, but a little muddy and smelled a little strange to us, and it tasted like Caucasian mineral waters, but if you gradually get used to the smell, you can drink it. If the water is bad, it should soon affect me. They decided to get food from the lake, there are simply no other solutions. Here, of course, the question arose, and how to get it, because the animals are amphibians, and, accordingly, waterfowl. If they sense danger, they will go to that part of the lake where it will be impossible to reach them in the pitch darkness of the cave. Besides, how do we get to the island where the animals come out at night? You can swim, but we do not know the depth of the reservoir, whether there are any other animals living in the lake besides animals, and if there are any, do they pose a danger to us, what other dangerous tricks are waiting for us in the lake water and how the lake will behave, will the lake water pull a person down? There are a lot of problematic issues that have arisen before, when we discussed the plan of our salvation. But then, an idea came to mind, if at night the animals come out of the lake to the island, it means that they used to go out and in the future they should also go to the shore, where we set up camp and spent the night last night. Perhaps they did not go ashore last night because we were staying and spending the night on the shore of the lake, and they instinctively stayed away from previously unknown, unforgiven guests, such as we are here. We decided to check this option and discussed our action plan for hunting the animal. According to our plan, as a group, in this case consisting of three people, we need to ambush the animals, for which, armed with an axe, a knife and a stone, it is necessary to hide between the stones somewhere close to the approximate place where the animals come ashore. And given that the animals on the land move slowly, wait for them to come ashore for the night and suddenly attack them. But this plan of ours will work only after dark and we had to sit hungry for another whole day. Meanwhile, we learned that lake water can be used for drinking, since my body did not even feel the difference between ordinary and lake water, unless drinking because of the smell was a little unpleasant. This was already our first success on the way to survival, and the members of the group drank plenty of water. Long before the evening darkness, we, that is, three guys from the group, including me, took a predetermined position, hiding behind rocks on the shore of the lake, in order to hunt a seal of such an animal. I had a knife in my hands, the second had an axe and the third had a stone weighing about three kilograms. Looking ahead, I will say that at the time when they decided to hunt the animal, I did not even know the names of these guys who participated in the hunt with me. As we later met, one of them, who armed himself with an axe, was Sergey, and the second, that is, the one who armed himself with a stone for hunting, was Kostya. Therefore, further describing in detail the event of our first hunt that took place in extreme conditions of the cave, I will not name the names of these guys who participated in the hunt for the animal in the future. And the rest of our group, at the time when we were preparing to hunt the animal, so as not to disturb us with their presence, retreated into the cave in advance. Evening has come, it is pitch dark, there is no visibility at all. In such conditions, we waited for about an hour. However, as we intuitively determined by the sounds, not a single amphibious animal ever came ashore. But then, when we felt from the sounds made by the animals that they were coming out to an island that was located not far from us, and I suddenly appreciated the idea that maybe they could smell us and determine our location in advance. Perhaps that is why the animals, having determined our exact location and having smelled the danger threatening them with their animal instincts, do not come to our shore. What to do in such situations and how to make sure that they do not smell our smell, because we so need food, without which we will not last long here? After consulting among themselves, we decided to wet our clothes in the lake water and thus, at least for a short time, prevent or weaken the spread of our smell through the air. We did exactly that, and it gave us results. After a while, sitting in ambush, we not only felt, but also began to hear, characteristic noises, that is, barely audible meowing, the rustle of water and rustles. All this meant that these animals, crawling out of the water to the shore, shaken off, crawling along the shore, looking for a place to sleep. They talked in whispers and decided to attack one of them at the same time. Making sure that the animals were already on the shore, instantly turning on the flashlights, we rushed forward at a run to cut off their path to the lake. Many of them, while we blocked their way to the lake, hurriedly jumped back into the lake, but the rest, suddenly baring their teeth, showing us sharp fangs, took a defensive pose. By the light of the lanterns, it was clear how viciously and full of determination to repel our attack and defend themselves together, their eyes were burning. We didn't know what to do in this situation, because we were all hunting for the first time. At the slightest approach to them, they aggressively rushed to meet us with the whole group. At the same time, we noticed that where the lantern moves, they turn their whole body towards the light source, without losing sight of the switched-on lantern, quickly and as a whole group move in the same direction. Leaving only one lamp on, we decided to take advantage of this. This gave us a positive effect. I quickly moved to the left with the flashlight turned on, and all the animals, turning their whole body in my direction, growling angrily, again took a defensive pose. In such a situation, in order to completely confuse their naive defensive animal instincts and at least for a short period of time distract their attention from other guys, I started making circular movements with a flashlight in my hands. The animals stopped for a moment, but baring their sharp fangs, they froze in a defensive pose. Taking advantage of this and catching the moment, one of us, that is, the one with the axe, quickly approaching them from behind, hit one of them on the head with the butt of the axe. The animal fell to the ground with a plaintive squeal, but continued to move forward slowly, with chaotic movements, towards the water. Then, with a repeated blow to the head, our three-kilogram stone overtook him, and the animal expired. Seeing this, the other animals immediately fled in all directions. Then we began to examine the prey by the light of lanterns. In front of us lay an amphibious animal, not previously seen by us, more than one meter long, with a strip on its head that looks like a skunk, the rest of its body looks like a seal. But only the dorsal part of the body of this animal was covered with very hard scales. The front paws of the animal, between the claws were connected by webbing, like ducks, and instead of the hind legs there were fins. A disgusting unpleasant smell was coming from the animal. So for the first time, we involuntarily became hunters, and perhaps the first hunters of a rare animal of this underground lake. But we were forced to do this by need – the author justified himself.
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