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By Root 752 0

short hinged jaw drooped. They were primarily herbivores, eating grass and bushes along the plain, but they also ate insects that looked like a cross between ants and cockroaches and lived in small mounds all over the plain. The bundas never worked finding the insects or bothered the mounds. Instead, at night, after a day of foraging for fresh grass and leaves, they'd simply lie down and go to sleep, sticking out incredibly long sticky tongues that appeared to be coated with white hairs. The insects would then obligingly crawl out of their mounds and onto the waiting tongues, and get caught. Without waking up, the bunda would reel the tongue in, gulp, and then out it would come again.

Several characteristics of the bunda became apparent as Mavra and Joshi made their way across the plains. The beasts were lazy, complacent, easily spooked, and so dumb, Joshi concluded, that should a bunda come upon a three-meter fence section attached to nothing else, it would turn around before figuring out how to walk around it.

The bundas probably weighed sixty or more kilos on the average. Fat hung off them everywhere. And they certainly bred—four per litter every five weeks, weaned after only two or three weeks, and full-grown in about a year. They had no natural enemies except the Ecundans, who managed them well.

From a distance an Ecundo would, they hoped, see only a pair broken off from a herd, maybe odd-looking and long-eared, and with perhaps a little less fur than usual. Two bundas not to be disturbed, for more food was on the way.

On the sixth day their theory was put to the test. They were getting used to the herds thundering through the plains on trails made by generations of bunda herds tramping the same ways, and, except for staying out of their way, Mavra and Joshi paid them little mind. This time, however, the herd seemed in a panic. Ordinarily Mavra and Joshi would travel by night, but if one is going to pretend to be a bunda, one can't be moving when bundas sleep, and so the sun shone warmly on them around midday when the stampede occurred. They barely dodged it, moving off in a hurry, but there was something in the animals' manner and almost frantic blind rush that made them pause.

The two lay down in the tall grass and waited several minutes before they saw the cause: five Ecundans, each standing on six two-meter-long crab-like legs, were coming down with amazing speed after the fleeing bundas. Their beady stalked eyes looked ahead—long tail-sections raised and nasty stingers dripping venom, the two claws raised at the ready before them.

The Ecundans intersected the herd near Mavra and Joshi. The two pressed into the ground and held their breaths as one passed almost over them, its eyes following the game ahead. It smelled lousy.

The Ecundans fanned out, driving the herd first one way, then the other, and, finally, almost in circles. Having tired the beasts, they closed in, claws grabbing, stingers flashing with incredible speed.

But those stung initially were just to help as barricades, to limit the frantic animals to a single avenue of escape, which was, in turn, covered by other Ecundans with great nets. The herd ran right into them, and even as the leaders stumbled and fell squealing into the trap, the others mindlessly followed, until the controlling Ecundans considered the haul sufficient and drew the net tight. Two nets held at least twenty bundas apiece, and the great scorpions carried the heavy load as if it were nothing.

Satisfied, the Ecundans let the rest of the herd pass, and all hands fell upon the paralyzed bundas that had formed the living corral, cutting with sharp claw-teeth and eating them, bones and all, in large gulps through mouths that opened wide in four directions. The Changs could see no chewing motions; either the Ecundans digested the chunks whole or their teeth were far back beyond the thorax.

"Oh, boy," Joshi breathed unenthusiastically as the Ecundans rumbled off with the day's catch. "I'd rather talk to them than have to argue with them."

"Wouldn't do much good," Mavra responded