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The worst part was the damn smell. Even when I passed for human, I could still smell the damn thing from inside the house. Everything that I am screamed at me to chase it down, sink my teeth in, and shake; break its neck and kill it. I would then eat it of course; I'm not wasteful. Unfortunately, at the moment I had neither the agility nor the teeth to actually take the thing down. I had my chance a month ago, but the fucker got away. I took another sip of my nearly burning hot coffee; grimacing at both the heat of the drink and the memory of last month. I should have had it, I was inches away! INCHES!!! But, I really can't risk leaving my property. I learned that lesson the hard way, long ago. I swear the monster knew my boundaries, made a break down into its burrows and right to the neighbors’. So, its scent continued to taunt me as I stood in my kitchen, mug of freshly hot coffee in hand, glaring out the window. I should have called an animal rescue or an exterminator, but my pride refused to allow it. This sort of thing shouldn't happen to me. I have the best of both worlds; the intelligence of a human and the hunting abilities of a wolf. What kind of werewolf would I be if I couldn't take down one measly little groundhog?
My eyes drifted across my expansive backyard looking for a plan of attack. I'd picked this property specifically for its yard. I needed a lot of space to exercise on transformation nights, and I really took advantage of what I got. I had a small herb and vegetable garden, which was now a ruin of dead plants and sunken fencing, a nice open section for running about, now creased with trenches, my agility course (those are more fun to run through than you might think) now a shamble of half sunken obstacles. I winced at the memory of tumbling off one of the seasaws as a burrow caved in under it. It'd even chewed its way into my compost. It was an industrious fucker. I had been tracking its movements across my property for the past month and a half. Listening to its infuriating scraping digging noises intently as I mapped out its intricate growing network of burrows. Unsurprisingly, they centered on my compost and vegetable garden. Those two hot spots were conveniently positioned fairly close together (initially my convenience, now its). That's where I had begun my pursuit last time. I hoped I'd at least scared it off, but I spotted it snooping as usual just days later. It was as tenacious as it was stupid. I went in without a plan last time; trusted too much in my natural abilities and instincts. My inability to get into its burrows was absolutely my undoing. I may be a canine, but, unlike a wiener dog, I am not bred for slinking into tunnels. I had to somehow corner it; get it to a place it can't dig, and cut off its ability to run. It had, so far, only chewed one entrance into the compost drum, so that was a possibility. Unfortunately, that hole wasn’t too far from the open top, as the bin had been fairly full when the verminous vandal violated it. Besides, I had seen the fucker climb a tree to escape me before: climbing out the top would be within its abilities, but if I built a lid… that was the seed to my plan.
It took most of the day to prepare. I repurposed a garbage bin lid and attached it with spring loaded hinges to the top of the bin. To hold it open I didn’t need anything more complicated than twine affixed to a stake in the ground. It was a weekday, but I always take transformation days off work. I’m fairly sure my co-workers think I’m doing witchcraft or something, but the truth is I need to calorie load before transforming. Radically altering your entire physiology in less than a minute takes a ton of energy, and if I'm going to be in a fit state to do anything afterwards (beyond tearing into whatever living flesh I could manage to get my teeth into) I need to make sure I get a lot of food. A large meal was also, to some extent, part of my plan as well. The more odds and ends I threw in the compost bin during meal prep, the more attractive my compost would be to a certain rodent thief tonight. I prepared a beef roast feast with plenty of chopped vegetables; not an uncommon meal for me, but this time I made sure I left unusually generously sliced portions of good edible plant flesh around stems and stalks that I took out to the compost. I plucked the twine that held the lid of the compost bin open, testing its tension. It twanged musically under tension. With luck, it would slam and hold shut with enough force to stymie the vermin tormentor whose smell taunted my nose.
I ate my warrior’s feast with a mix of relish and determination. With every bite of deliciously roasted cow, I imagined the vermin’s flesh and fur in my jaws. With every sip of deep red wine, I tasted not sweet alcohol, but the little monster’s savory blood. Scenarios ran through my head. If the bin lid failed, or if it slipped past me down between my legs, where it would head if it managed to slip into its burrows. These provisions for my impending victory nourished both my mind and body. I couldn’t have asked for a better ritual of preparation. After I finished my dinner, I began the very human, less… carnal, ritual of loading the dishwasher. I let my mind continue to wander as my hands automatically carried out the chore. What would I do with the inedible remains? A trophy of some kind? I could stitch the remaining skin into a bag. Its bones might make a nice decorative accent if properly arranged. I could make up some story of how I trapped and killed it for the benefit of my neighbors. Most of them being avid hunters, they might get a kick at someone they thought an amateur so proudly displaying such a meager trophy. I smiled to myself. I’d like to see them accomplish a similar feat buck naked in the middle of the night without their fancy guns and traps.
My skin started to prickle as I noticed the sky was darkening and reddening. The carmine sunset was a good omen for my hunt tonight, but I hadn’t much time. I stowed the last of the dishes in the dishwasher carelessly, spilling a good amount of water in my haste. I left it. I didn’t have time to mop up the water that splashed across my kitchen floor. I had to get out of my clothes. I’ve heard rumors that some lycanthropes manage to make life work in the suburbs or cities, but I can’t imagine how. I had a fairly large pet door installed in my back door so that I could get out if needed, but even that never stopped me carelessly breaking things during and immediately after transforming. That's even in a spacious house. I couldn’t imagine what kind of damage I would do if I transformed in an apartment building. Also, any clothes we wear inevitably get shredded. People in densely populated areas tend to notice when their neighbors are wandering around naked outside. I guessed they must have some supernatural levels of self control not to thrash any indoor space they transform within, or they must buy a lot of cheap clothes. I, on the other hand, could just walk outside my back door naked, bathed only in moonlight, and be pretty confident no one would see me. Even if they did, I’d be thought of as an eccentric as opposed to a criminal… unless they saw me actually transform. Then, I’d be a monster.
I imagine seeing it is not a pleasant experience. It's not painful, but it probably looks like it. Thick fur sprouts across my body like meat through a fine grinder, joints pop and crack as bones lengthen, distort and rearrange. I can even hear sickening sloshing and sucking sounds as my organs metamorphose and slide around and against each other to their final positions. It took a few years of transformations before I stopped puking every time. As my new, quadrupedal physiology settled into place, I fell into a well practiced meditative state. Suddenly inhabiting a different body with different layout and sensory input was always a shock to the system. It was easy to become overwhelmed with new ways of seeing, and overwhelming clarity in scent and hearing. It’s easy to lose your grip on yourself and go a little crazy. Luckily for me, (and my neighbor’s livestock) that hadn't happened in years. I focused on the only scent that mattered to me now: the vermin I sought to extricate from the world of living things. I could feel, hear, and smell it rooting around in the earth below me. It was in its burrows, naturally, the surface isn’t safe for rodents, especially at night. A nearby hoot underscored its caution. I growled in spite of myself. This prey was mine! I wasn't going to let some disgusting bird steal it! My vermin was making its way across the back yard, under my agility course fairly far from the compost bin. It must have been spending the late afternoon savaging my neighbors property, and was returning to check on the spoils of my compost bin. I didn’t have much time to finish my preparations. I crept over to the bin as fast as I dared. I didn't want the vibrations of my paw steps to alert it that I was out on the prowl. I leapt up with as much lightness as a large lupine beast could manage, and into the open top of the compost bin. With any luck, it would sound to the vermin that I had just dumped a load of goodies in there. The bin was just large enough for me to fit if I curled around nose to tail. There wasn’t a lot of room to roll, but I did my best to quietly cover myself in the scent of rotting plant flesh. When I was satisfied I leapt back out and took up my stake out post nearby.
I lay there for an uncounted time in the moonlit grass of my back yard; every sense attuned to the precise location of the nasty vermin. Time feels different in my lunar form: it has less meaning. It didn’t matter, my prey was more important anyway. My nose twitched and my ears perked. The larcenous lout paused for a moment and altered course. I shifted up onto my paws while keeping low to the ground. It caught onto the bait, and was making its way toward the compost bin. I slunk a bit closer myself; being as stealthy as possible. It made no indication that it noticed me. I saw it emerge, climb up the outside of the bin to the hole it had chewed above the fill line, and stick its greedy little nose into my trap. I waited and waited as the annoyingly cautious vermin thoroughly investigated the security of its mark. Its head went in, then its front paws, its back, and then I saw the fucker’s tail disappear. I crept closer, not towards the hole, but towards the twine anchored to the side of the bin. Keeping an ear out, listening to the sounds of the trash thief gorging his fat little body, I craned my neck taking the twin in my jaws. I knew I would only have a brief window of time to whip my snout over to the hole in the bin before it could escape me again. I had to be fast.
Thock! I yanked the rope from its anchor in the ground, the lid slammed over the top of the bin. Before the hog could react, my snout was ready and waiting in front of the hole. I could see it looking about for escape. Its scent, now drenched in fear, grew as I slid my head slowly into the hole. I reveled in its fear, imagining how it must look to have a werewolf’s head encroach blocking out all light. I wanted to stretch this moment as long as I could, but, before I was ready, it snapped. People think groundhogs are slow ponderous animals, but any rodent can really move when it needs to. With another, quieter, thock and a squeak the lid slammed shut again and the rodent was gone! I instinctively jerked my head up, but the ragged edge of the hole encircling my neck reminded me my head was still in the barrel. I pulled myself out and cast about for a clue to where the slippery scum had fled. My nose picked up the scent of its blood: on the lid, in the dirt, underground. The lid must have scratched it as it made its bid of freedom.
Were I less prepared, that would have been the end of it, but I, now, had a fairly complete mental map of its burrows. I knew where it was going. As I suspected it would, it was making for my closest property line. It definitely knew in which direction I wouldn’t chase it. Unfortunately for it, I had longer, stronger, legs! I sped ahead of it, and pounced on the dirt right above where the burrow should be. The earth gave a little beneath my paws, but not enough. I pounced again, and again until I sank in deep. The burrow finally caved! Letting out a little huff of satisfaction, I made for the other tunnels. It would only have two choices: race to see who could dig faster (a competition it would lose), or surface and try to make it back down into a tunnel past my cave-ins. What the dumb little rodent had no way of knowing was that I wasn’t just heading it off, I was corralling it. This fucker wouldn’t be able to get away from me in my own den! After a few more strategic cave-ins, I forced it to surface just outside my back door. My hulking form was already positioned to give it no choice but to bolt inside the house.
Now the chase was on in earnest, and nothing else mattered! The back door led directly into my living room. Most of my furniture was cheap. The glass topped coffee table was probably the nicest thing in there aside from the TV, but none of that mattered, nothing would stand between me and my prey! It led a deliciously spirited chase around my living room; weaving through furniture legs, climbing up the couches, and chairs, and down again as I rammed into and through them with wild abandon! I cursed the beast for every chair leg it made me break, and every pillow cushion it made me tear! It hopped onto the coffee table, and I made the mistake of pouncing on it. The glass shattered under my sudden weight! I didn’t feel any pain right away, but I knew I was going to have to tend to more than a few lacerations before the night was out. The groundhog, dazed, but, due to its size, better off than I, didn’t know which way to turn, and it picked the wrong one. Perhaps, it felt air coming through the vent, and assumed that would yield a way out, but the metal vent cover was implacable. I had it cornered.
I stared down at my rival, and it, squeaking in fear, cast about helplessly for an exit before finally squaring up in a fighting stance. Were I capable, I might have laughed. Instead, I huffed. After all this trash loving vandal had gone through, did it seriously think it could take me in a straight up fight? Of course it couldn’t. It was prey, and it was mine! Words, full of the same exhilaration I now felt, floated up from my past: “This one’s mine!” Suddenly, I was no longer the predator. I was just a pup. Pursued by hunters. Inexplicable fear crashed out from my memory, and through my body, freezing my muscles! The groundhog noticed the subtle change in my posture and scent, and was taken aback. It glanced around again for escape, but kept still, expecting another trap. He was scared, but the same fear that gripped him gripped me. He stole, because he was hungry. I stole, because I was hungry. I was suddenly too aware of the destruction that I had wrought on my own den in my single minded pursuit of this fellow creature’s death. A sentence I had intended on carrying out for what? The crime of survival? The fear ebbed, and was replaced by profound guilt. Gently, I took the ground hog in my jaws. Whether he gave up, or was stupified by my sudden change of behavior, I don’t know, but he didn’t resist. I slowly carried him out through the back door, limping and wincing slightly from the growing pain in my glass shredded paws. I placed him on the ground, and let him go. He didn’t move right away. He looked around, dazed, and then looked back up at me. I huffed in what I hoped would be an encouraging manner. He scampered off into the yard. Werewolves can’t smile, but my tail swished lazily back and forth.
I stared out at my yard wondering what I’d do now. Maybe make a little groundhog habitat? Call an animal rescue? My thoughts were halted by movement above me. A shadow swooped down from the roof’s edge and plucked the little groundhog from my yard. The owl hooted to itself pridefully as it soared off to a distant tree to enjoy its meal. I stared at it enjoying its midnight snack. Through the recognition of the absurdity of what had just transpired, all I could think was: Damn, I could have eaten that.