Deep affection knows no origin; remember the polar bear's love for you.

Chapter 62 The Price of Growth

The small dark shadow bounced and collided with the protruding part of the stone wall before finally falling heavily to the ground!
The goose that had just swooped down and then flew back into the sky quickly landed to the side. At the same time, a white figure suddenly darted down from the top of another stone wall and descended at high speed!
Guo Mi then realized that what had fallen to the ground was not a black stone, but a gosling that looked to have just been born!

The goose spread its wings and stood in front of the gosling, trying to block the attack of the bird of prey with its body and buy the gosling a way to survive.

A white falcon, intent on hunting goslings, slammed into a goose like a cannonball, knocking it over.

The impact force of a falcon when hunting is enormous, and it has few natural enemies in the wild. The intense collision was enough to leave the goose on the verge of death.

But it still braced itself and desperately tried to block the gosling.

The gosling, which had fallen from a great height, lay on the rocks with its body broken apart, its fate unknown. Guo Mi suspected it was dead, as it had fallen from a height of at least eighty meters.

The height of this cliff face is much greater than the one she climbed; at that height, even a bear would be smashed to pieces if it fell.

Even if she were blinded by hunger, she wouldn't have been able to climb up such a steep cliff.

What's more, what fell down was such a tiny little gosling.

However, just as Guo Mi was lamenting that the goose was doing something futile, the gosling that she thought was already dead suddenly twitched twice!

Guo Mi stared wide-eyed, dumbfounded, at the fluffy little goose on the short rock that had suddenly "come back to life"!

The tender body struggled with all its might, then slowly rolled to its feet, its short wings flapping, and it raised its little head to look at the goose protecting it, letting out a high-pitched, soft cry!

It's as if it's telling the world that it survived!
The call was like a horn urging the badly injured goose to flap its wings and let out a rough cry, stretching its neck to attack the white gyrfalcon in front of it, trying to drive the uninvited guest away.

The falcon, now grounded, has its attack power greatly reduced, and after weighing the pros and cons, it has no choice but to take to the sky.

Having finally driven away the formidable enemy, the goose seemed to lose all its fighting spirit and collapsed instantly. Exhausted, it lowered its head and rubbed against the gosling, its heavily injured body exposed.

Guo Mi believes it taught her child the most valuable lesson: courage.

In the distance, two geese, one large and one small, are snuggling affectionately together, as if it were the perfect ending to a story.

Guo Mi was so pleased with themselves that she hesitated whether or not to take this opportunity to eat them.

However, not every story has a happy ending; the course of a story can change in an instant!

Two foxes suddenly darted out from the crevice of the boulder!

The goose clearly hadn't anticipated this turn of events, and it was too late for it to spread its wings and try to protect the goslings again!

The two foxes worked together seamlessly. One fox dealt with the goose and then bit its outstretched wing, while the other pounced on the gosling!

The helpless little creature didn't even have time to struggle before the fox snatched it into its mouth and dragged it into the crevice of the boulder!

The goose tried to catch its chick, but it was too late. The remaining fox grabbed its wing and dragged it backward with a violent shake of its head.

The goose, already at its last gasp, could only watch helplessly as the fox carried off the gosling.

No, it couldn't care less about the gosling now. The cunning fox had already noticed its serious injury, and its greedy eyes fell on its bloody wound, while a piercing screech came from its throat.

If you can get more, why not?
The fox relentlessly tore at the wounds on the goose's wings, sending tattered feathers and blood flying everywhere, while its mournful cries echoed through the valley!

It was at this moment that Guo Mi stepped onto the boulder.

The unusually prominent, heavy footsteps and panting of the bear instantly brought the bloodthirsty fox to its senses!

Foxes are much more agile than bears, but this only helps them escape. Once they come into close contact with a bear, their chances of survival are extremely slim.

At this moment, the fox realized that it had no chance of resisting Guo Mi. The scene of her and the little bear hunting the fox was still vivid in its mind, and the fox's corpse was still lying on the pile of stones not far away!

The Arctic fox glanced reluctantly at the dying goose, and before Guo Mi could catch it, it nimbly leaped into a crevice in the rocks.

Guo Mi felt inexplicably heavy-hearted. She raised her paw and walked towards the goose lying motionless on the rock. It was already dead, its round eyes wide open. Guo Mi wondered if it was a coincidence, but she felt that it was looking at the crevice in the rocks where the goslings had been dragged.

The two bear cubs jumped onto the rock one after the other, looked at the dead gray-white goose, but did not go forward. Instead, they obediently sat down next to Guo Mi.

Guo Mi stared at the dead goose for a long time before finally whispering to the two bear cubs:

"This is edible too."

The courage of the two geese, one big and one small, filled her with awe. If it weren't for the fox, Guo Mi thought she might actually have let them go.

But it was too late now. She and the bear still had to survive, and they couldn't give up the food they already had for the sake of spiritual fulfillment.

The two bear cubs silently plucked at the goose feathers, Guo Mi ate two bites of the Arctic fox she had killed earlier, and finally sat down quietly to wait.

After spending an afternoon there, she finally realized that the gosling falling from the cliff was not a coincidence.

We initially thought the goslings had simply fallen out of their nest by accident, but it turns out they jumped down on purpose!
One after another, goslings jumped down from the ground, and the parents repeatedly demonstrated and protected them.

Some of the goslings that fell from the sky died instantly, while others were lucky enough to survive.

Those that survived still had to avoid birds of prey and foxes that were waiting in the sky or in the crevices of rocks, so their survival rate was not high.

Of course, it's not all tragedy. After surviving these hardships, the goslings will waddle along behind their parents, step by step, towards the riverbank where there is food, to welcome their new life.

Originally, Guo Mi wanted to observe what the fox was waiting for here so that she could get a share of the spoils.

Now she has to give up the idea.

There are some psychological factors involved, but not all of them. The main reason is that these goslings are really too small; most of them are conservatively estimated to have hatched within two days.

Unlike fish in a frozen lake, goslings take time to hatch from eggs, and each mother goose can only lay a limited number of eggs.

The number of these geese is far less than that of other migrating birds.

If someone is just starving and occasionally eats one or two goslings, it might not have much of an impact. But if Guo Mi wanted to survive by eating goslings, she would probably have to eat every gosling that falls in a day.

Wouldn't this mean that her bear caused a disaster that led to the extinction of the goose species in this area?

As someone who used to work in the animal-related field, Guo Mi wants to avoid causing such harm to the species as much as possible.

Ultimately, bears are not natural predators of birds, and she is unwilling to become the culprit who maliciously disrupts the food chain.

However, Guo Mi quickly found a new prey—

Those are Arctic foxes hiding in the crevices.

The terrain of this area is perfect for Arctic foxes to hide in. She can't catch many foxes in a day, but she can't come away empty-handed either.

Bears don't need to eat their fill every day.

Here, she and her cub caught foxes, which served as both a snack and a way to kill time and combat hunger.

Plus, you can occasionally find geese that have died tragically like the ones we just saw. It seems like the perfect place right now.

Arctic geese
A rare and endangered bird species that migrates to the Arctic Circle to lay its eggs during the summer.

Newly hatched goslings must follow their parents and jump off a 100-meter-high cliff to reach water where there is food within three days; otherwise, once their new down falls off, they will have a hard time surviving.

It can be said that every Arctic goose that survives to adulthood has experienced the test of death.

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(End of this chapter)