Eden, Dawn Read online

ENTRY 3: THE BEASTS OF EDEN CONTINUED

  The Hog

  Along with the large Eden-deer, which are too fast for us to hunt, and live primarily on the open plains which we keep clear of, Eden’s omnivorous Hog is a primary source of food in Eden’s food-chain—and forms the basis of our staple diet.

  A dirty rodent-like creature as large as a bush pig, the Hog is a disgusting looking beast, but it’s surprisingly tasty. With a pig-like tail, it tastes a lot like bacon in the spring and summer months, yet is blander in the autumn and winter months, tasting more like beef. Although theories abound, we’re not sure why the taste changes. Since we eat the creature just about every single day—if we’ve planned our hunting schedules right—I’m grateful for the change.

  Usually caked in purple-blue mud, the Hog is, in fact, reddish-green in colour. Living in herds, the Hog lives in the jungle areas we inhabit and is about as stupid as any of Earth’s dumb animals. Think donkey or sheep. And then divide by three and you’ll be close to the combined intelligence of six Hog. No kidding. With poor eyesight, a poor sense of smell, they rely on herd panic and quantity of numbers to escape their attackers. We only hunt what we need and avoid interfering with their habitat and herd-life as much as possible. If the Hog population on Eden was ever under threat, our chances of survival would decrease drastically.

  Along with the meat they provide, we turn their pelts into blankets, coats and junglers, and use their decomposed flesh as a nighttime paste to keep the Raptors away. Hogs are too dumb to tame and too feral to domesticate despite being relatively harmless—although, with their rat-like incisors, they can inflict a nasty bite. Ask Cartyr. He lost his left earlobe to one.

  The Raptor

  Eden’s terror of the air is the Raptor, a powerful four-winged crow-like bird of prey nearly three times the size of Earth’s vulture and just as ugly. Typically, with a body over two stretches long and a wing span of nine stretches, I have seen a Raptor with a body as big as three stretches and a wingspan of nearly twelve stretches. One massive, ugly bird. Dark purple in colour, with blazing red underbellies and bald heads, they feed primarily on other birds, creatures like the Hog, and us—if they can catch one, or at the most two, of us alone in an open area. Unlike Earth’s vulture, they prefer their food live, although will occasionally stoop to fill up on carrion. Except a Hog carcass. For whatever reason, they cannot stand the decomposing flesh of a Hog. It’s either fresh, squealing Hog or no Hog for the Raptor.

  Once a Raptor sinks its talons into its victim, it doesn’t carry the prey away even though it is strong enough to do so. Rather, it uses its enormous vulture-like beak to gouge its prey to near death. And then it begins to feast while the creature or human is still alive. Usually, where one Raptor eats, many more will quickly join—materialising, seemingly out of thin air. A human can be devoured in a wild, gory three-minute feeding frenzy. The collective noun, a murder of Raptors, is a perfect fit.

  With a heightened sense of sight, these fiends of the air hunt during both daytime and nighttime. Our numbers keep them away during the day, and our Hog paste keeps them away at night.

  The four wings are an oddity. The upper wings on each side of the creature are definitively stronger and more developed. At first, we surmised that the lower wings served to steer the creature’s flight, possibly enabling it to negotiate tight-turning circles. However, further observation has debunked this theory. While the Raptor is remarkably quick in flight, their wings immensely powerful, they are also clumsy creatures. Smaller birds often outmanoeuvre the Raptor, the second pair of wings not seeming to offer any added advantage.

  In the last few of years, I’ve spotted some Raptors with a drastically smaller if not inutile second set of wings—almost as though they were redundant and shrivelling from lack of use. We might just be witnessing an evolutionary development within the species in this primordial moment in Eden-history.