builders' formidable teeth. A fully grown lake builder was actually larger and much heavier than a Person, and while they preferred to flee to some safe, underwater hiding place when danger threatened, they could be formidable fighters if they were cornered.
Laughs Brightly told him.
Sharp Nose flicked his tail in agreement, and the two of them flowed onward through the net-wood. Fallen leaves drifted on the surface of the lake below them. There were more of them than there would normally have been at this time of year, another sign of the season's dryness, and some of the branches about them showed signs of death and brittleness.
he pointed out, and tasted Laughs Brightly's unhappy agreement.
* * *
Honor grimaced as she passed a red spruce more than half of whose scaled, blue-green leaves had turned brown and yellow. She'd seen more and more of those, and she'd made a mental note to com the Forestry Service about it. There was plenty of sign of bark beetles and flat case borers, which was only to be expected, she supposed, after such a dry summer. The rock martins and hill swallows which would normally have preyed on them hatched far fewer fledglings in years like this one. Reproduction rates for both species of bird analogue were tied to a whole host of environmental and climatic factors, and they were always lower in particularly dry seasons. Probably because the insect species upon which they usually subsisted were likely to be in shorter supply, she thought. Unfortunately, whatever might have been the case elsewhere on Haley's Land, there seemed to be plenty of moisture along Rock Aspen Creek, and the insect population here was doing just fine. In fact, it had gotten considerably worse since her last visit, and she was seeing plenty of evidence of leaf cutter ants and leaf shearers, too.
It was all part of the natural cycle of the planet, and the SFS was scarcely likely to fog the area with insecticides, but the Rangers did like to keep track of data like this. And the flat case borers, especially, were some of the worst tree-killers in Sphinx's entire ecosystem.
I wonder if that's what those two 'cats were out here checking on? This is a fairly important part of their range in fall and winter. It'd make sense for them to keep an eye on it in a year like this one. I hope they're not going to end up short of food this winter!
She knew that happened sometimes, and it was always hard for anyone who cared about the 'cats. Treecats who turned up at one of the Forestry Service's stations in a distressed state could count on being fed and offered emergency medical care, but the SFS had decided centuries ago not to intervene in the wild except in cases of disaster relief. Hard winters didn't constitute “disaster” by the Forestry Service's definition unless they produced acute starvation, and intellectually, Honor understood why that was. Offering assistance too readily was likely to encourage both 'cat dependency on humans and the sort of overpopulation which led to genuine catastrophe. Not that understanding the policy would prevent her or her parents from providing meals to any ‘cats who turned up at their front door. In fact, they could usually count on at least one treecat visitor every week or so during the winter. It was painfully obvious that word had gotten around long ago that the Harringtons were an easy touch who always had celery stashed away somewhere.
The creek broadened and deepened as she approached the near-beaver dam. The meter-long critters could top sixty kilos in weight, and the stumps of red spruce, near-pine, and mountain hickory gave clear evidence of just how efficient they were as loggers. Like the merely four-limbed Old Earth species for which they had been named, near-beavers tended to cut the timber for their dams and lodges in spring or summer and let it season until they needed it for building purposes in fall and winter. They could take