A Little Extra Effort

“But we should make every effort to make things comfortable for them!”

“Boon, I agree-“

“Are you really telling me that camouflaging a trap is going to make it less likely for a koronok to get trapped by it?”

“Boon!” Wish’s sharp tone was unexpected. He wasn’t one to snap, especially when engineering projects were on the table. “This isn’t something that can be rapidly produced, Boon, not in the time we have. We can’t just get ARC to refurbish dozens and dozens of traps for the sake of comfort.”

“It’s still a difference if even one Koronok gets to come through less frightened.”

Wish tilted his head, pausing. A smile spread on his snout, and he nodded in agreement. “Yeah. Yeah you’re right about that, I guess. So what did you-“

Boon excitedly handed him his drawing pad, a hastily sketched drawing of a fairly standard trap for small animals. Only there were lines and scratches everywhere.

“What’s the-“

“That’s all bark. Strips of bark all stuck to the edges. It’ll make the trap smaller but-“

“It’ll be more like a little hollow than some sterile, metal box of horrors. This is good, Boon.”

The much larger Xero squeaked with glee and hopped around their living room. Wish was sitting on their couch, playing some game when Boon had come up, ranting about the tragedy of the little koronoks all getting snatched up with little warning from their homes, to get taken to a lab. And when they reacted defensively and violently in the lab, which they almost certainly would, they’d be treated clinically, with comfort taking a few steps down the ladder of priority in favor of safety, and efficiency. There was, of course, little precious time. Boon, heartbroken optimist that he was, wanted to do something about it.

“This… shouldn’t actually be too difficult,” Wish said. “We could just print a texture on the inside of a shell, fitted to the traps, and slide it in. We wouldn’t even have to alter the traps themselves.”

“Look here!”

Wish turned his head again, watching as Boon drew his finger across the screen to rotate it. Since when did this big guy learn to do 3-D rendering? Regardless, there was a very obvious feature. Bark was raised up in the back, protecting a little hole filled with what could only have been leaves. “Boon, these traps aren’t THAT big.”

“But aren’t-“

“No, Koronoks are really small. But they are very, very long, and the traps are small enough that we can carry them easily.”

“Darn. I just wanted a little nest, but I know they’ll be frantic once the door drops shut.”

Wish seemed to light up. “I’ve got it!”

Days later, Boon was out with a group of volunteer Xeros, each examining their own traps. Each of them had their own sectors and, Boon, equipped with Patagia and his huge tail, was obviously assigned to one of the higher up regions of Jorupa Forest. After examining some scans of the place, he’d found himself a clean route that he could easily scale. It involved a few gaps to glide across to avoid impossible climbs, but all in all, an easy trek for him.

The most difficult part of it was the warmth. Much as he was loathe to admit it, his thick, tundra fur made the trip difficult. Halfway through his climb, before one of his jumps, Boon took a big gulp of water from his water bottle, muttering his distant thanks to the ranger that had demanded he bring something with him.

He could hear the chittering and rattling before he’d finished climbing up the last branch. “Hi friend,” he said softly, almost mournfully. He didn’t walk up to the trap yet though, instead taking gear from his satchel. A harness to go across his back, where he would hook up the trap. Some gloves and boots with dozens of tiny climbing hooks. More of Wish’s handiwork. Once he had everything equipped, he finally stepped over to the trap. It rattled, but with his big ears, he could tell it wasn’t quite the frantic scraping and scrambling that he’d heard from the observations of others. Maybe it was luck, maybe it was just a less energetic Koronok, or it had already exhausted itself compared to the others. But Boon took it as a win. “Sit tight little guy, we’ve got a long way down.