Skinning a Morris

Placing five jars of decent tasting mixtures on the table, I took the empty jars and headed out of my house to wash them at the communal washing area.

Each house was too small to contain private washrooms, so the whole camp just shared one communal washroom that was situated on the bottom left of the camp area.

The communal washroom had one shared bathroom, several toilets, and a large basin for washing both hands and dishes during lunch and dinner time.

Hugging my jars there, I greeted some of the camp members as I passed them. Most of them were quite polite and kind, making short conversation or correcting me when I was headed in the wrong direction. Especially one young woman, who seemed to recognize me, and joined me in the trip to the washroom to help me wash the jars.

Talking to her helped me get an idea of how life was at the camp.

"Each member of the camp has a duty according to this roster that is drafted by the leader in charge of the camp. For us, that would be Josh. Every month, the duties of each person would change, and those on night shift would switch to day shift, and vice versa. However, most people would stay in their area of expertise, especially if they request to."

"For example, Maya, the girl with blond hair and green eyes, really loves to cook and is good at it. So she requested to be posted on cooking duty permanently. And Josephine, a shorter brown haired red eyed woman, enjoys being on the hunting team. So she is always placed there. In fact, you should be able to see her soon. Usually around this time the hunting team should be heading back to camp."

Looking at the color of the sky, the young woman, who introduced herself as Katty, hastened the speed at which she was washing the jars.

"We should hurry. The washing area is usually reserved for the hunting team to clean the prey when they come back."

Filling the jars up, we quickly cleaned them with practiced movements. Shaking the water off the jars, we hurried to place them back into my survival belt and remove ourselves from this area.

Just in time too! As we were about to leave, we saw a group of people heading towards the washing area.

One brown haired red eyed woman, probably Josephine, waved her hand enthusiastically at Katty.

"Katty! We need your help cleaning up this Morris!"

In the hands of Josephine was a horn, and that horn was attached to a creature that had short thin fur. Three other people were holding it by one of its thin but muscular legs, ending with a nasty looking black hoof. Its remaining leg was dangling, half eaten enough that it didn't touch the ground.

Nodding in farewell at me, Katty ran over to the group as they set down the Morris. One of the men took out a knife from his survival belt and started to cut off the horns. These horns were then passed to one of the group members who casually dropped them onto the floor.

Standing quietly at the side, I watched them dissect and carve up the animal. After removing the horns, they flipped it such that its stomach faced the canopy. Then they slit a knife through its belly and took out all its organs. Finally emptying the insides, Katty took a brush and bucket of water, scrubbing the insides of the animal clean.

After washing out the insides of the skeleton, the group placed the innards into the bucket and left them aside next to the horns.

At this point, each group member went to their respective sections and started taking apart the prey. The one who slit open the belly had repositioned himself at the Morris' legs. Inserting his knife at the legs, he cut up until just below the tail for both sides, joining the cuts in a v shape underneath the long tail. He then stabbed the kneecaps of the Morris and snapped off both it's legs. On the front end of the Morris, Josephine was doing the same thing.

Then with silent coordination, the two groupmates helped hold the Morris up by its broken legs, hooking their fingers into the area between the leg bones for support, and the rest of the team pulled the skin off the carcass. Occasionally the teammate with the skinning knife would pull it out to cut some membrane before continuing to pull.

Once the skin was pulled all the way to its neck, everyone stopped pulling and watched as that teammate cut through the Morris' neck and completely removed the skin from the carcass.

Wiping the sweat off their foreheads, half of the group, including Katty, carried the skin off to probably be washed and made into useful clothing. The other half, that included Josephine, were cutting the Morris at various points and removing cuts of meat.

Engrossed in looking at their work, I did not notice someone was standing beside me until Josh suddenly spoke.

"We Lupos pride ourselves on our teamwork. Our tactic communication, the way we do our tasks so swiftly, is something that I guarantee you won't find in any other ethnicity on this planet."

With a smug smile, Josh was crossing his arms in pride as he watched his people swiftly take the Morris apart.

"Usually we don't get such big prey like Morris. Today was a lucky day. The team reported that a predator had hunted down two Morris, but had grown full after eating one, so it allowed us to take the other one. This amount of meat could probably provide enough protein for us for about a whole week."

Seeing the bucket and the horns abandoned, Josh walked over and talked with the group, then picked them up and handed them to me.

"We usually throw the organs away, and the horns are used as decorations. But since you have managed to find a use for the bitter bark, maybe these two things could also be edible. It always helps to have more parts that we could eat."

Casually placing them into my arms, Josh walked off, perhaps to check on some other teams.

[Or maybe to slack off.]

Sazzy huffed from where she was standing beside me.

[For someone who asked for a favor, he sure doesn't seem to know how to treat others.]

Shrugging my shoulders, I looked down at my bucket of organs and a pair of horns.

Walking towards an unused part of the washing area, I placed the bucket down and looked through the organs.

If we were talking about dishes involving organs, then Pig's organ soup would be the first thing on my mind. However, a Morris was not a pig, it seemed to resemble more like a deer on the outside.

Shifting through the organs, I realized that I recognized none of them. Furthermore, as I was looking at them, Sazzy helpfully reminded me that fire was not allowed in the camp. How do you cook soup without fire? How do they eat anything without fire?

At this point, before I could do anything with the organs, I had to first find out what they did with the meat.

Washing my hands and the bucket handle, I dragged my bucket and horns back to my house for drop off before I tried to find Josh to answer my questions.

Fortunately for me, on the way back to my house, Tim spotted me carrying the bucket and politely offered to help.

[Since Tim is a regular here, maybe he knows how the locals cook their food without fire.]

Handing the bucket over, I enquired how the Lupos cook anything in the camp.

"To be fair, there are quite a number of heat sensitive predators that roam the forest. Not only that, but the wood around here is extremely flammable so forest fires are especially deadly. So no fires allowed because of safety. At most there are mixtures that heat up as they react to be used as bait for these predators. Or as defense measures. Anyway, because of the ban on open fires, the camp actually uses underground heat sources to cook food. Josh will probably take us to them later. However, these heat sources aren't as hot as fire so instead a lot of food here is steamed. Even the meat."

Reaching my house, I opened the door and invited Tim in. Tim set the bucket down on the floor and wiped off his sweat. He then retrieved a piece of film from his belt and covered the top. I then placed the horns on the table. After leaving the bucket and horns inside the house, the both of us headed towards the communal dining area.

"It's just after the scavenging team returned so that meat will probably only be ready in a couple days, but the previous hunt's meat will probably be on the menu today so you can try it out! The softness of the meat will surprise you!"