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 Posted: Fri Dec 09, 2011 1:02 pm
 Sar settled down to the recently stalked and killed dung beetle, his tail whipping from side to side in excitement. The recent kill should mean that everything wouldn't be messed up inside from decay or anything elsee weird. It would be an almost perfect experiment experience.
Carefully with one sharp claw, Sar dissected the belly of the dead insect. Delicate incisions, Sar had to be very careful not to destroy the specimen or cut to deeply wasting the opportunity to understand the little buggers. He didn't want to have to repeat the process of killing a dung beetle without squishing it or damaging the body again. That had been extremely difficult. And its exoskeleton had proven to be more of a hindrance against squishes than Sar would have thought.
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Posted: Fri Dec 09, 2011 1:19 pm
 Wingu had been minding her own business, just walking around, you know, that kind of thing. Hoping no one would rope her into doing something important, like hunting. If she thought about it, it was kind of good that she seemed to have frozen at adolescence. People expected teenagers to be slackers, it was much weirder for a grownup to laze about. But like this, she was fine. It was even more socially acceptable to mess with people a bit!
Speaking of messing with people, Wingu saw one of her ideal targets. A cub! The white lioness would never dream of harming a cub, or anything. she just liked playing with them more, they were usually so much more spirited and fun. So, she didn't need to think much before she decided to stalk up to the cub.
She was about to do her usual 'scare-the-kid!' greeting, when she realized he was doing something... uh...
"What're you doing to that beetle?" She wrinkled her nose and furrowed her brows.
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Posted: Fri Dec 09, 2011 1:59 pm
Sar jumped at the voice so close behind him. He didn't expect anyone to be near him. He'd done it again. And worse off the careful incision into the dung beetle's exoskeleton underbelly was now a jagged cut ripping the creature in half. The insides weren't damaged, thankfully, but if he'd wanted to preserve the exoskeleton, that wasn't happening any more.
He turned to the older lioness with an annoyed look, more annoyed than he should have been considering that he'd been caught unaware of his surroundings. And maybe that's why he was more annoyed then he should have been. His pride was kind of stung. "I happen to have been preforming a dissection on this particular dung beetle. At least until the tearing it into two, that is. I was experimenting on it's exoskeleton to figure out how to cut into it without squishing it and then was going to move onto its innards." Sar explained.
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Posted: Fri Dec 09, 2011 2:21 pm
Wingu smiled slightly as she successfully startled the cub, even though, at that point, she hadn't even been trying anymore. But it was always funny when they jumped and got all fuzzy! But the smile didn't last long, thanks to the cubs following words. See, Wingu didn't consider herself stupid, but just the fact that it was a cub talking that way was enough to slow her down.
"Say what?" She tilted her head. "You wanted to look at it's innards?" That much she could get. "Why didn't you just step on it?" That way, the guts and stuff come out for you! She raised a paw to demonstrate on one of the halves, but was smart enough to realize that such an action might not please this cub. So she set it down on the floor, allowing the cub to explain why he didn't just squash it first.
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Posted: Fri Dec 09, 2011 2:39 pm
Sar bit back a sigh. He'd just explained that. And apparently the lioness hadn't been listening. This was going to be a great encounter. "If I'd stepped on the dung beetle, innards would have been squished as well. How would I be able to examine the innards if they were squished into useless gut-goo under my paw?" Sar frowned at the raised paw of the lioness, but she put it back down and he relaxed.
Giving into the inevitable, Sar sighed and displayed the one half of the dung beetle. "See how the innards are preserved for a short time before decay. Beyond the oozing blood and body liquids? You can see some of the tiny organs that make the beetle go, or allowed the beetle to go before I killed it anyway." Sar nudged one of the intact tiny organs with his claw carefully. "I think this might be its stomach. Or something," he muttered more to himself than to the lioness.
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Posted: Fri Dec 09, 2011 3:01 pm
Okay, then. This was a very weird cub. She'd met uptight cubs before, sure. But never ones that cared much about looking at the innards of a beetle! Whenever she, or anyone else she had met, played with bugs, it was usually just the same old catch-and-sometimes-squish game.
"Sucks to be the beetle." She briefly considered the ethics of killing a creature just to see its insides. Then again, it's not like squishing them just to play a game was any better, so she couldn't complain. She decided to humor the cub and squint at the little half of a beetle he displayed. Truthfully, she took a while to actually discern any kind of reasonable shape, but eventually she started to see some things going on.
"Kind of like when you open up a zebra, I guess." Some things didn't seem quite like a zebra. For starters, it wasn't the same color. But she could see... some kind of similarity. Mostly because both zebras and, apparently, beetles seemed to have some tube-like shapes in them.
"But why do you want to see this stuff, anyways?" Rough-housing still seemed much more fun to Wingu!
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Posted: Fri Dec 09, 2011 8:43 pm
Sar shrugged at the lioness. "I've not had the opportunity to dissect a zebra without my siblings eating the organs or the flesh, leaving it in no condition to examine the innards. But one must start small if you wish to understand the workings of the prey animals. And the differences of each. And besides I was bored and wondered if seeing the innards of the dung beetle should influence the written word that represents it." Sar confided, pulling out some of the innards and displaying them on the side where the oozy liquid hadn't reached on the ground.
Who would have known that the little bug had so many things on the inside? Sar continued to pull out and line up the innards beside the exoskeleton. Wow dung beetles had a lot of innards. "Can you believe all of this?"
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Posted: Sat Dec 10, 2011 2:18 am
Boy, this little kid liked to talk all weird. Perhaps another lion would feel a little dumb here, but Wingu didn't really care about such things, like people being more intelligent than her. She was clever where she needed to be, so this was no big deal. "Don't think so. Folks who named it prob'ly just named it that because it rolls up poop. And you'll find dung in anyone, so even if this beetle here has some, he wouldn't be special."
Even though she'd never really looked so much into the organs of whatever she ate or killed, Wingu knew well enough you could find dung inside a zebra. It was gross when you stumbled across it. He seemed pretty excited about all the little things inside a beetle. "Yeah, sure." She just agreed, because it seemed like what he'd want her to do.
... "Would you eat that?"
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Posted: Sat Dec 10, 2011 10:53 am
Sar was only half listening to the lioness and it was a good thing because she started talking in gibberish. Well half-gibberish. After all, Sar thought she was still talking about the dung beetle but she'd jumped ahead in the conversation to a point he was sure he wanted to continue on towards. All well. It didn't really matter. Because she was right, the innards, though fascinating, weren't worthy of changing the written word of dung beetle.
Sar sat back and started to "write" the word dung beetle with its six little legs with a rolling round circle. And then Sar snapped to attention. "Why would I want to eat it? Dung beetles don't only roll up poop or roll around in it. They lay their eggs in it, hatch and are born in it and they eat it! Who would eat a DUNG beelte. You might as well eat dung!"
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Posted: Sat Dec 10, 2011 12:19 pm
Wingu shrugged. "I've done it once. It's crunchy." No big deal, was just part of a dare. She had also eaten worms, butterflies and a snake, once. "So you're saying you don't have the guts to eat one?" She frowned. She had almost expected this cub to be totally okay with it, after all, he was fine with just opening up the little buggers and staring at their innards.
"Didn't taste that bad." So what if it ate dung? Zebras ate grass and Wingu didn't like grass, but she liked zebra meat. Zebra weren't always very clean, either, after you roll them around in the dirt to catch them. Not that she liked eating bugs much, but dung beetles just tasted like... Well, bugs. Not particularly fowl bugs.
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Posted: Sat Dec 10, 2011 9:20 pm
Sar sat down and raised his eyebrow at the lioness. "No." He stated simply. "Seriously, does that type of juvenile challenge normally work on anyone? Does it work on you?" Sar tilted his head. "That's rather ineffective and predictable." He frowned examining his own feelings about the challenge. "And rather disappointing really. As if bravery is measured based off of ill-conceived theory. Do you think the hunters or the scouts or the other adults in the pride go about issuing useless and rather ridiculous challenges at each other just to prove that they have - how do you put it - enough guts - to do so?"
Sar's tail twitched in annoyance. How old was this lioness? Five days old? Did he have enough guts to eat a dung beetle? Why would he even care about that?
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Posted: Mon Dec 12, 2011 5:54 am
Fortunately, Wingu wasn't the sort to care about what a random cub thought of her. Maybe if he were a bit older, she'd get annoyed. But as far as children went, they were so little and... well, little. She had to be patient with them, or not get annoyed by what they thought, or else she'd go squishing their heads, or something. "It works sometimes."
"Seriously," She said, trying to imitate his tone. "Do you think it really makes you that much smarter to know about the innards of a dung beetle? How is that useful to you at all? It won't make you a better hunter, or guard, or scout or even a much more interesting person to talk to." Because really, most people didn't care about the guts of beetles. Or most people she had met, anyways. Even that weirdo, Kwasi, didn't. But then again, Kwasi hated anything dirty and gross, so that was probably why.
"All I'm saying is, you apparently find it fun to look at the guts of bugs, and that is fine. I, and some of my friends, find it fun to play games. Eating bugs is sometimes part of those games. Teasing is, too." She shrugged, and attempting to lighten the mood, added. "So I conclude that you are a wuss." Wingu offered Sar a stupid grin, in the hopes of getting across that she was just joking with him at this point.
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Posted: Mon Dec 12, 2011 2:28 pm
Sar rolled his eyes at the older lioness. "Oh! Woe to me, a lioness whom I don't even know, not even her name, thinks I'm un-interesting and a wuss. Whatever shall I do?" Sar put his forepaw to his forehead and fell backward squishing all of the bug guts, crunching the exoskeleton. He didn't even care, because he'd already decided not to use the innards in deciding how to write the dung beetle word. Mom was probably going to hate having to groom him tonight, but he'd go roll around in mud later to get most of the poop guts off of himself. Maybe he'd even go swimming in a watering hole closer to the den. Maybe.
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Posted: Mon Dec 12, 2011 3:02 pm
"Wingu." Though he hadn't even asked her name, she felt she might as well fill it in. At least he couldn't claim she was too impolite to do that! Even if she hadn't exactly done it at the appropriate time. "I never said you're un-interesting, though. Just a wuss." Maybe he wasn't exactly the kind of lion Wingu would like to hang out with more than once, but she couldn't claim he was uninteresting, if only because she knew herself too well. If Sar had been uninteresting, she would've rid herself of him much sooner.
At first he'd been talking about carefully preserving the beetle, next thing, he was rolling back and crushing them. What a weird cub! Amusingly enough, Wingu had the same idea as the cub: his mom would hate cleaning him. "You know, you're pretty alright." For a cub that seemed to think she was stupid and infantile. Wingu was cool with that. She could deal! She even kind of liked Kwasi, even though she knew Kwasi didn't like her at all. And this cub was at least cooler than Kwasi, because he actually opened up bugs, even if he didn't dare to eat them.
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Posted: Mon Dec 12, 2011 3:10 pm
"I'm Sar." He introduced himself quickly, deciding to stay laying on the ground. But his inner curiosity was starting to get the better of him. He could feel all the questions bubbling up to burst out of him. And he had tried to distract himself with a bug's innards. Worked for a while. Very short while.
Sar looked around for another distraction. Something to examine. Something to figure out. Anything. But only the lioness was around. "How old are you anyway? And where are you from? I haven't seen you in the area before, and my family's den is over there." Sar gestured to the east as the questions popped out of his mouth. "Have you seen a hyena before?" Sar bit his tongue to keep from overwhelming her with questions. He'd done that before. Often actually, but he was trying to keep that from happening. At least control how much he asked at once. At the very least.
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