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| Joanne begins the trip by searching among the wildflowers for herbs we can use to mask our scent during the hunt. |
Kathy asks Joanne to recall some of the ancient tribal stories that her great grandparents told her. |
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| We descend into the ancient ancestral lands. |
Joanne leads us in a prayer to the water spirit for a successful sqox hunt. |
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| And we begin tracking sqox - a cross breed between a squirrel and a fox. |
Tracking becomes much more difficult when we pass through a tribal village. |
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| A Shaman prays to the rock spirit. |
The villagers tell us that sqox have been seen high atop the rocky cliffs. |
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| We have to be very quiet and very attentive as we approach a possible den. Sqox can be vicious if surprised. |
Another tribe is stalking the same den as we are, only from a different side of the mountain. |
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| Peggy tells the other tribe a small lie -- that we saw sqox on the far ridge. They turn around and head towards that ridge, away from where we are tracking. |
We wait until the other tribe is far enough away to not disturb our tracking. |
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| We hear rustling among the miners lettuce. It may be sqox. |
On our bellies, we crawl around to a different vantage point. |
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| No, it was only a firrel - the other kind of cross breed between a squirrel and a fox. They are much more common and not so interesting. |
Joanne invokes the water sprits once again to help us find sqox. |
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| A sqox was sighted! Peggy made a mad dash to try to catch it by the tail. The squox was very sly and Peggy ended up with her hand caught in the tree. |
Approaching another sqox den, Peggy holds her arms out to show she is not a threat. |
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| Joanne makes the male sqox territorial defense sound to see if she can lure a sqox into the open. |
We hear something further ahead, so we go to investigate. |
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| We have not only found just any den, but it is the oldest known den in the lands. It is between the legs of the ancient reclining-man tree, right below the penis. |
Joanne points out where sqox have scent marked nearby plants. |
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| We give thanks to the water spirits for a successful hunt. |
As a courtesy, we report the sqox sighting information to the ranger. |
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| A very successful and educational trip. We found several firrels and one squox family. |
