Day 9: Caccia / Hunt
If you asked him, there’s nothing like the hunt, and if he had the vocabulary to express it properly, he’s say he loves it and prefers it to the dead beetles Noah hands him.
Noah had been surprised the first time he brought back a dead bird. Yes, magpies are natural scavengers, but they are also fearless hunters; like many other birds, they hunt smaller animals, like mice and tiny birds that are unfortunate enough to perish on their claws.
His human has told him several times not to bring game to the house, not to hunt recklessly, and to just enjoy fruits and insects. It’s not that Noah doesn’t understand his nature, or that he tries to deny it, he thinks the boy might be too embarrassed to admit it, but maybe he just finds the carnage disgusting.
So, when Noah is at school, he hunts. He dares go close to that cursed forest that scares so many animals off, in case he may found something small enough to kill, but big enough to be satisfying.
He loves being the bigger animal, loves how hunting has honed a sort of instinct, a knowing, he would say. It’s mid-morning when he finds his prey, there’s a certain satisfaction as his claws sink into the other’s flesh, knowing they have truly no escape, knowing they are successful.
Of course, as one hunts, one may also learn what it is to be prey. That small animal might have been on a gathering of his own, on his own little hunt, but his instincts were not enhanced enough, they were not enough.
Apollo looks at his prize, a small mouse slowly growing colder as life escapes from their body and blood flows from their veins. He feels a sound behind him, and all alarms go off, he loves the hunt, but hates those godforsaken woods, where you’re never the biggest predator, where there’s always something ready to hunt you down.