King of the Forbidden Jungle

As I sat here by the fire sipping a mug of hot chocolate, and watching the snow flutter down in gentle flakes. My nephew walked up to me and promptly asked me “Uncle, can you tell me a story?”

“What kind of story?” I ask patiently. He had his blanket around his shoulders and also had a mug of hot chocolate and looked into my eyes pointedly and forthrightly said “A hunting story.”

I groaned and felt my back pop. My nephew enjoyed my tales of adventure, as I’m sure you will too my dear reader. However, as I have told him many a time, this story isn’t for the faint of heart. It is for those who understand the dangers involved in hunting dangerous game. I don’t mean for sport. Every time I was called upon to shoot a Chimera or a Timberwolf, it was because I was contacted either by Princess Celestia herself, or by one of her many officials. I myself, have a duty to perform, just as we all do here in Equestria.

But enough of my jargon, please sit back, and enjoy with my nephew, the tale which I told him “King of the Forbidden Jungle”.

It wasn’t my first Manticore, and she wouldn’t have been my last. But I certainly would remember him for the rest of my life. I named her Kana, in a native tongue, it means powerful in our language. The native tribes had been having a problem with Kana for quite some time. Every month or two, he would sneak in, and kill a pony. It didn’t matter if the pony was young, old, or in their prime. Whenever the opportunity presented itself, there he was to strike. That’s the thing with cats whether winged or not is that they are opportunistic. Whenever some pony has their back turned or whenever a mother isn’t watching her foal, that’s when they’ll attack. The village was located deep in the Forbidden Jungle, and frequently visited by my long friend Zecora.

It wasn’t Ponyville, the well-known town in Equestria where Princess Twilight lives as well as the other famous characters in her adventures, but as I said, it was deep in the forest where Timberwolves lurk in the shadows and where Hydras swim in the uncharted swamps. It was deep in this same forest that Kana lived. He was an older male. One who had lived past his prime and who, in his prime, had been the king of a pride of Manticores on the borders of the Bad Lands. I was told that Manny Roars was a descendant of him. But he was too old to hunt for faster prey, and instead, had taken to the taste of pony.

I was notified by Princess Celestia one day in a letter I received from her by post which read:

Dear Silver Mane,

I have received troubling news from my dear friend Zecora that some villagers in the Forbidden Jungle have been attacked by a Manticore. I can’t spare any of my guards to protect the village, and I know that you are a skilled hunter. I would be personally very grateful, if you would handle this situation for me. You will be compensated for your travel expenses, but I have other pressing issues at this time and unfortunately, Twilight isn’t mature enough yet to understand the difficulties of this situation. I can’t involve her in something like this. I dare say that a pony such as Fluttershy would do everything she could to understand the beast, but we simply  don’t have time.

Yours Sincerely,

Princess Celestia

What could I do? Surely I would answer the call when one of the Diarchs herself asked me for aid. So I packed my bags and hopped on the next airship flight from Canterlot towards the Forbidden Jungle. I had a layover at Ponyville at around 11:30 a.m. and by 2:00 p.m. I was back in the air again. I slept for most of the flight, knowing what an adrenaline rush the actual hunt could be, and understanding perfectly well what the arduous jungle terrain could do to a pony if one wasn’t aware. Stinging insects, snake bites, or a simple trip which could twist an ankle or break an arm would leave one pray to the many predators which appear after nightfall. I wouldn’t have to deal with jetlag, but I knew that my body would still have to adjust to a new time zone.

We arrived in Apple Loosa at around half past six. I wasn’t about to set out on an expedition that same day. I knew that I had to acclimatize first to the desert, and then to the jungle which would come afterwards. By we, I mean the full expedition and myself. My group consisted of myself, A.K. Yearling, and two archaeologists whose names were Trowel and Spade. Aptly named I’m sure, but they weren’t my type of ponies. Anyway, we arrived at the edge of the desert and it took us four days of hard travel. We had to by hoof through the shifting sands, constantly watching out for scorpions, sidewinder vipers, and other desert dwellers which would impede our progress.

I had several campfire conversations with A.K. Yearling, she was an interesting pony make no mistake. An archaeologist herself, she was more adventurer slash treasure hunter than one who would actually sit around and dig for hours on end, getting excited over a tiny shard of pottery or miniscule coin. I found archaeology to be quite nonsensical personally. But there was a storyteller I could tell you. She told me tales of how she fought against natives, or against an Ahuizotl, or against other corrupt treasure hunters who only wanted them for money. I exchanged a few of my own and she was equally impressed. One night, it must have been the third or fourth that we were in the desert she asked me “Silver, have you ever hunted a Manticore before?”

“Not my first time love,” I said taking a sip of a rock shandy that I had prepared. It was an interesting drink which I had picked up on one of my earlier expeditions to the San Palomino Desert. The recipe consisted of lime cordial, angostura aromatic bitters, ginger beer, lemonade and ice, and it was the perfect drink for hot desert days. She looked at me though curiously “How exactly do you hunt a Manticore?”

“There are two specific methods,” I began “the first, is that you kill a bait animal, anything large will do, and you have to tie the bait to a tree. It does depend on what the animal has been recently eating or what it normally eats. The second method, is to kill them while they’re in the air. You have to use a shotgun for that and it requires some pretty skillful shooting. But you have to be careful. They are predators after all love.”

“When was the last time you hunted a Manticore?”

“Three years back,” I said taking another sip “I was younger than I am now. I won’t forget that day, then again, I try not to forget every hunt I have.”

“Tell me about it,” she asked curiously.

“I was with a regular hunting safari,” I said “this one for pleasure, not for purpose. We had killed a hippo as a bait animal earlier that day. The skin is very tough, like a hoof only it’s all over the body, we had to use axes instead of knives to field dress the meat. Anyway, we had built a blind about fifty yards from a tree upwind from where we had discovered a game trail. The blind was made of tall dry grass about shoulder height and we hunkered down around sunset. First, the scavenging jackals came, then the larger hyenas, yipping and fighting off the jackals, trying to get a bite out of the haunch of meat hanging there. Then…there was a roar, a long echoing sound which reverberated around the whole valley and echoed off the mountain sides of the ravine where we had our blind. And there he came, from behind us on the right side, big, tough, mean, with a long shaggy mane and eyes which darted back and forth more shiftily than a poker player. His claws gleamed in the moonlight which streamed downwards from above and his ivory colored teeth glistened with the saliva which dripped from them. When he saw that hunk of meat up there, he looked up and you could see the smile of ecstasy on his face. He leapt up onto the tree branch and began eating. We watched in silent fascination, hoping the wind wouldn’t shift, when suddenly, his head snapped up like a whip being cracked. He even looked in our general direction, I readied my rifle just in case. But then he seemed satisfied that the noise was something else, and it had been. A female Manticore had come padding up from the left side outside of our peripheral vision. She waited patiently before she too stood on her hind legs and began eating the hippo meat.”

A.K. Yearling sat there listening to me eagerly. I could tell that my story was gripping her and so I went on “At that point, I began to slowly raise my rifle. Any sudden movement would have alerted the Manticores to our presence and I couldn’t risk it. I raised the scope to my eye and could perfectly see the Manticores back facing me. I could see the sinews of his muscles bulging as he greedily ate the meat. It wasn’t a good shot though, I had to wait. I steadied my breathing. By this point my breath was so ragged and my body shaking from so much adrenaline that I could barely see through my rifle scope. Then I remembered my old instructions on how to shoot a rifle. The words ‘Slow down, take a deep breath, exhale slowly and squeeze the trigger’ came to mind. I worked through all of the steps before squeezing the trigger. One of the fundamentals of shooting any dangerous game is that you want to make a good clean shot the first time. You never, ever, ever, want to go after a wounded animal, whether dangerous or not. But that’s for a different story. So I’m there, with my rifle, going through my exercises, when suddenly the opportunity presents itself. The Manticore had shifted its body to allow the second Manticore more room to feed. The male was facing broadside to me. I aimed right for his shoulder blades and as if in slow motion, I touched one shot off. There wasn’t any sound. No roars, no screams, not anything. The female took to the air and bolted. The male fell off the tree and bolted into the undergrowth. I thought to myself ‘Great, now I have a wounded Manticore I have to go after’. My guide, named Caliber, patted me on the back and said ‘Good shot! Good shot!’ I waited though. I wanted to be sure that Manticore was dead and didn’t take to the air just like his mate. I quickly reloaded another round. Then after ten minutes, we got up. There were four natives who were helping us with the tracking and field dressing close by but they were in a jeep and couldn’t get to us for ten more minutes. So there we stood, waiting, listening, and watching. Then, once the jeep pulled up, the trackers got out. These ponies could track an ant over a hot rock they were that good, and we had no trouble in finding the Manticores blood trail. When we got up to him, he was stone dead. To be cautious, my guide shined a light into the Manticores eyes, sometimes they’ll deceive you and let you get close so that they can attack. But after several more rifle prods, we knew that he was dead.”