down trees as much as thirty-six centimeters in diameter, although they usually settled for smaller prey, and—also like Old Earth beavers—they constructed “canals” to float bigger trunks and branches to where they needed them. In many ways, they were among Sphinx's most destructive life forms, given what even a small population of them could do to woodland. On the other hand, the water they impounded behind their dams played a critical part in maintaining healthy wetlands and watersheds. And they also helped the spread of picketwood.
For some reason, they never touched picketwood. It wasn't because of any sort of toxicity issue—the SFS had determined that long ago—but picketwood was a clever survivor which had worked out resistance modes for many of the diseases and parasites (including near-beavers) which attacked other Sphinxian flora. Apparently, it just plain didn't taste good as far as near-beavers were concerned, and their habit of eating everything else along the banks of their streams and ponds cleared space for it, which had to make treecats happy.
Pity it doesn't work the same way for the flat case borers, Honor thought now, picking her way through the near-beavers' lumberyard. On the other hand, of course, if they were willing to bring down the picketwood, too, it would probably mean I could get in here with a hang glider, which would've saved me quite a hike!
She spent a couple of minutes trying to convince herself that she really would have preferred to fly, rather than hiking. The effort didn't work out very well, though, and she snorted in amusement at herself.
She reached the upstream end of the near-beaver pond proper and smiled appreciatively as a leopard trout broke the surface, leaping half out of the water to take one of the insects buzzing above the pond's surface. It wasn't the biggest leopard trout she'd ever seen—they could go was much as eighty or ninety centimeters in length—but it was certainly well grown. There was going to be some excellent fishing up this way this fall.
She looked around, getting her bearings, and saw a distant flash of purple through the tree trunks. At least the bugs hadn't eaten the mountain tulip she'd come after! Now all she had to do was hike halfway around the lake, cut the blossoms she'd come for, and then hike back home again.
* * *
Sharp Nose froze suddenly, his head coming up in alarm.
he exclaimed, and tasted Laughs Brightly's surprise echoing his own. His brother's concern wasn't as deep as his, though, and he found Laughs Brightly's calmness reassuring.
Sharp Nose added after a moment, and Laughs Brightly flicked his ears in agreement, accepting the younger treecat's explanation for his surprise.
he agreed.
The two treecats moved cautiously closer. Snow hunters, like death fangs, were far too big and heavy to follow a Person up into the trees, and they were normally less territorial than death fangs. That did not mean that they would not happily eat any Person they could catch, though, and only death fangs were bigger than they were. At the moment, two of them stood shoulder deep in the lake builders' pond, and as the brothers watched, one of them pounced, snatching a striped swimmer from the water and flipping its head to fling it ashore.
Laughs Brightly said, and Sharp Nose tasted the suddenly stronger edge of caution in his brother's mind-glow.
Sharp Nose nodded as he watched the pair of snow hunter cubs scuffling through the brush to where the wildly flopping striped swimmer had landed. They were very young, although already several times a Person's size, and their clumsiness was obvious, but there was nothing wrong with their jaws. The still squirming swimmer came apart into two unequal sized pieces as the cubs squabbled over it, and the one with the smaller piece squalled unhappily as it realized its sibling had done better than it had.
Laughs Brightly continued more glumly, and Sharp Nose could only agree once more. A single snow hunter could eat many times a Person's weight in