5th December

Jen slowly got used to the gold air that blew into her face, but she was happy that the thick jacket kept the rest of her body warm. When she was changing in the evening, she always noticed how she got tired when the cold air surrounded her whole body. They put on the heating in the house, but because all the other girls wore fur, they did not agree to go over a certain temperature and even though it felt warm for the others, Jen felt cold when she was not wearing her pajama or clothes.

But now she felt nice and warm in the jacket and her thick tights with the long skirt over it. Her mother had packed her only the warmest clothes, knowing that her daughter would need them here.

"I got one." The excited cry of Lisa came from a few steps away and Jen quickly hurried to her, just like the other girls.

Jake had shown them how to read the tracks of feral animals and had given them the task to find tracks of a bunny and find the burrows of them.

He thoroughly educated them to not disturb the sleep of the animals but just find the entrance to their burrow and stay a few steps away from it. Especially the boys needed to be reminded of that because boys always had stupid ideas to have fun, at least in Jen's opinion.

The girls, who formed a team for searching the tracks, looked at the pawprints in the snow. They were just at the edge of the forest.

"You are right, this looks just like Jake showed us." Ginny mentioned and scanned the ground. "It looks like it went that way." She pointed along the edge of the forest.

The girls followed the track and had their eyes glued on the ground. The track followed the edge of the forest for a few meters and then it turned towards the trees and vanished between them.

"Oh no... it went into the forest." Complained Ida. "There is no snow on the ground in the forest." Jen went close to the location where the tracks left the snow.

"But we can still see the tracks." She shouted after a short while observing the ground. She saw the pawprints in a pile of leaves. Even though most of the ground was frozen, the leaves and branches still were giving away the track.

"Good job finding it." Jen winced a bit when Olga clapped on her shoulder. The bear cub was very strong and even though Jen found out that she was very nice and friendly, she still was a bit intimidated by her.

"Looks like we have to follow it into the forest." Olga said loud and looked over to Sophie, who followed them. Jake had taken the task to look over the boys who had the task to follow a track of a fox.

Sophie came closer and looked at the track. "Good job finding it." She praised the girls and they giggled. "It is alright to go into the forest when I am with you. Just remember to not cross the fence, when you get to it.

The girls cheered and entered the forest, with Sophie following them. She smiled at the excitement of the cubs.

It got harder to trial the track in the forest. There was no constant clear line, like in the snow, that they could follow, but only now and then, when the bunny crossed a pile of leaves or stepped on a branch that broke, they could see the direction it took.

In addition to becoming harder to see the paw prints, the bunny also did not run straight anymore after entering the forest. They followed it deeper into the forest.

Soon they split up and spread a bit to look for the tracks, because it became harder and harder to see it. Sometimes it took a few minutes until one of the girls found a new hint for the direction of the bunny.

"I think it started to rush." Mentioned Olga, pointing on a few visible prints of the paws. They had not seen so clear paw prints in a while and already wondered if they maybe missed the bunny and followed another animal track by chance, but now they knew that they had the right track.

"Maybe it suddenly remembered that his loved one is waiting at home and hurried up." Suggested Lisa and the girls giggled.

They followed the track further and from the exhaustion the chatting got less and less. Jen felt hot and now welcomed the cold breeze in her face. She felt the underclothes soak in her sweat and her wings started to hurt a bit from being restricted by the mantle for so long.

They heard the cheering of one of the boys through the forest. "Looks like they found their track as well." Mentioned Ida and the girls giggled a bit out of breath.

It was easier to follow the track now, because the bunny seemed to have dashed hard, not caring about branches anymore.

Every now and then, they could see a clear paw print and a lot of branches of pushes were bent or cracked in the path of the hasty fella. In addition, the track went more straight now and only now and then made a sharp hook.

The voices of the boys got closer. They seemed to still have a lot of energy and cheered and laughed. It sounded like they went into their direction.

The forest opened to a small clearing that was covered in snow. Jen directly saw the track of the bunny that did jumps of about one meter. They followed it into the middle of the clearing, where the track suddenly stopped. The snow was brushed away at the place where the track suddenly stopped and there were tracks of another animal that came from the left and stopped at the same place, then left into the direction the bunny was running before.

There was a small patch of red in the snow. At the moment, that Jen was still staring at the place in shock, the other girls came out of the forest. At the same time, Zen, Brandon, Milo, Steven and Leon, the oldest boys, broke out of the forest from the direction the other pawprints came.

"We were right! It is going this way." Leon shouted to the others and ran towards Jen. "What are you doing here?" he asked Jen, but she did not look up or answer.

Zen was a few steps behind Leon and looked to the ground at Jen's feet.

"Hey, it caught the bunny of the girls!" he shouted excited. "That is so cool!"

Jen did not share the opinion. She did not find it cool but horrible that the bunny, that they had imagined rushing home to its loved one, died here by becoming pray to the fox.

"Nooooo..." Jen heard Ginny starting to cry and shortly after, Ida joined in. Lisa appeared next to Jen, also looking down, and her voice sounded very sad.

"Mr. Bunny... now his wife will wait forever." She said with a sniff and Jen also felt the tears well up in her eyes.

"You are horrible." Shot Olga at Zen and put an arm around the shoulder of Lisa and Jen. Jen allowed Olga to lead her away from the location where the bunny had been killed and back to the others.

Sophie was already comforting Ginny and Ida. The girls all cried for a few minutes, while the rest of the boys gathered around the crime scene. Most of them sounded more excited than shocked about the kill of the bunny.

"Are you okay?" Jen looked up and saw Steven put his hand on the shoulder of Ginny. He looked like a nice and caring big brother and the girl nodded.

Steven caressed her head and smiled. "Don't take it too hard, okay? If the fox would not get a bunny every now and then, it would starve to death."

It sounded cruel but at the same time the words of Steven made them sympathize with the fox. "I am sure the fox got kits in her burrow and needed to feed them." The older horse continued.

The boy surely knew how to cheer up his sister. She stopped her crying and even the other girls stopped and listened to the boy. He caressed over the cheek of his sister. "Cheer up, okay? Do you want to help us find the burrow of the fox?"

It was not only Ginny but all girls nodded and emitted a shaky mumbling. Steven went ahead and after the other boys, that just left the clearing and the girls followed them.

Half an hour later, they found the foxes burrow. They only looked at it from afar, because Jake did not want them to disturb the animal.

He explained them about how foxes hunted and raised their cubs and that the foxes in this forest slowly gained back a bit of numbers after years of declining population.

Hearing from the trouble the foxes had with poachers killing them in the last years and how the fox was essential to the survival of the foxes in this forest, the girls slowly got over their shock and sadness about the death of the bunny.

Jake told them, that there were countless bunnies around the camp and that in one year, they even had to catch and kill quite a few, because they had been too many and started to cause problems for the other animals and the forest.

He managed to make the fox the hero that helped to diminish the population of the bunnies, so the other bunnies had it better and the forest would not be in danger anymore.

The girls got over the experience and accepted the way of the wildlife in the forest. It was eat or be eaten here.

When Jen lay in her bed in the evening, with her cover up to her chin, feeling warm and comfortable, she thought about the bunny and the foxes. She was sure, that the bunny just tried to run away from the fox and therefore rushed like that. She told herself, that there was no Mrs. Bunny waiting for her husband but that this bunny was just a cheeky boy who angered the forest and was punished by the fox.

This way she was able to not feel sad about it anymore and managed to fall asleep soon after.