You crouch and fixate on the prey being dangled nearly under your nose, preparing to spring for it— and settle back down with a huff when Pancho and Bel fix you with baleful glares. Instead of having a snack or a teachable moment, you lie on your side and sulk. No one loves you. No one cares if you get fed. You're not cute like a juvenile fox. You can just go rot.
You give him an unimpressed look. "Seriously, Erskin? Go pick on Logan, at least she's the same size as you." Then you put your snout in the air and trot back to where you found the mice, before he can figure out that you think he's cute even when he's being a brat.
"I can't pick on Logan, I'm crippled and small and alone and sad and crippled and starving and really sad and alone and crippled," you whine after him. It comes out in a long mournful woooo that carries excellently across the grass. For greatest emphasis you curl into a ball and sulk into your tail for awhile. You hope that Pancho might care a little even if Bel's given you up for dead.
You roll your eyes. "Helen will feed us if we don't catch something, you drama queen." Just then the dark blot of Bel in the distance sort of goes 'poing!' -- so apparently someone's catching stuff.
You give a final sigh and uncurl. "You really should go start in on catching your own mice," you tell her. "You won't always have a human around to give you tinned meats." Also you just remembered that the fox has probably cached other rodents that you can't very well dig up while Pancho's puppysitting you.
"I'll always have a human around to plan for the full moon, i.e. myself," you point out. "But okay. Show me how to catch mice."
You give her a very that's what you think sort of look and get to your maximum number of feet. "Alright, let's go, then. We'll head off this way, away from all that dog noise. Now, we're lightly built, so small prey such as rabbits and rodents will make up most of our diet when we're not around waterways to get ducks or roadways to get roadkill. This isn't good land for birds..." while you're talking, you're making your way along, ears swiveling for the sound of little squeaks. "...aaannnd jump!" You spring above the grass and dive silently down on top of the squeak. With just one paw, you have to put in a lot of extra snapping and scrambling: you just barely get the poor bastard by a hind foot with your teeth, and have to awkwardly whack it on the head a few times with your paw before the neck gets properly broken. You hop over to Pancho's side and frisk the little brown mouthful in front of her nose just long enough that she bunches up to pounce— then you bolt it down yourself. "Get your own!" you say, wagging. "Oh, and— never put your prey down before you're damn sure it's dead or it'll zip right off, likely as not. You'd be amazed what some mice can just shrug off."
"But how did you find it?" you complain, because that's the bit you needed told. You gamely sniff around, and your nose certainly is assaulting you with a flood of technicolor impressions, but you don't know what any of them mean. Oh, wait -- you do know, because there was one right here. Briefly. You crowd up in Erskin's personal space and sniff his breath. (gonna hit the sack, gnight)
"I'm not giving it back," you protest, and swallow hard just to make sure. "Sniff around until you've got the general area and then listen for little rustles and squeaks. They're much too small and fast for you to track them one by one by scent. Then jump and land on one— and make sure to spread your toes."
You spread your toes experimentally so you know what it feels like, then buckle down and get to work. You're good at following instructions and learning things from one repetition -- you wouldn't have made it through either med school or basic training otherwise. Five minutes later you're crunching down on a furry nugget of blood and bones, your expression one of surprised ambivalence. "That was truly disgusting," you comment once you've swallowed, "but I liked it. I see what Bel meant about potato chips." You throw Erskin a grin. "Does pouncing hurt your bad leg? I'll catch you some, you're right, it's easier than I thought."
"Makes it itch more, really," you say. "I might be back in one piece by tonight. Bring me anything you don't want, though, I shan't complain." You lope off in a third direction to find an uninterrupted field for pouncing. Mouse-hunting gets more difficult the longer you comb over the same place: even mice are smart enough to stay inside when it starts raining hungry canids.
The little fox is getting pretty good at hunting the excess mice flushed out when you catch one. Logan has started following you around too, but the closest she's come to catching anything is when a scared mouse stopped under her nose and she sniffed it thoroughly before losing interest in it. The fox took it the next moment; Logan was more interested in the fox than her meal. And then Logan starts complaining about being hungry, and you have to laugh. "Everyone full of mice?" you say as you trot up to the others with your entourage. "Logan wants her kibble, nothing else is food to her, apparently."
"I want kibble too," you put in. You give a big stretch, trying to get the kinks out of your aching shoulder. You've had about the same poor luck as Pancho, clumsy and one-footed as you are, but it was still excellent fun and anyway you got a few. You go to trot off, and see— "Bel, you had better not think about taking this fox along with us."
"No, of course not, she'd be miserable indoors." You look back, and realize she's still following. "Kiddo, you can't come with us." She obviously disagrees. You remember how it only took twenty years to domesticate foxes, as if they were already on the verge of self-domestication from hanging around suburban trash cans, like raccoons. "What about your food caches, hon? You don't wanna leave those, some meanie like Erskin will dig them all up!"
"Oh, I'm allowed to do that now?" you ask, and take a few menacing steps towards the fox. She screeches "NO!!!" and dashes off, hopefully to rebury them. "She really was burying them too shallowly," you say.
"You're all heart," you say sarcastically. It doesn't come across very scathing, though; you're not actually annoyed anymore, and he's kind of adorable when he's being a dick, and it's even harder to lie about your feelings in wolf form than human.
"I'm gracious and charitable and patient and sweet and that's why you love me," you say, and gently bite his nose.
"You're a precious cinnamon roll," you agree. "You two are disgustingly cute," Pancho says. "We are all friends!" Logan puts in. She frisks around in front of you pointedly: "We forgot the tiny, go get the tiny!" "No, Logan. She was a temporary friend." Pancho adds, "A dog park friend." This, Logan understands -- or else she's just distracted. "Dog park!" she cries happily, and runs off ahead. Pancho licks Erskin's face, nuzzles your ear, and lopes after her. You're happy to stick to Erskin's slower pace. "Seriously, you're a delinquent, but fortunately I find it sexy. How's the leg healing?"
"Very quickly, for all my whining," you say, wagging. "Tinned meats and good company make a delightful change from the usual stretch of waiting out a bad break underneath a bush somewhere. I was just telling Pancho, I should be all knitted up by tonight. We can go running."
