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

Chapter 7 The Lost Bear
The Arctic icebergs are a vast expanse of white, with only the boundary between the sky and the earth visible in the distance, the rest a boundless expanse of white.

Guo Mi didn't know the way, so she could only choose one direction and then trekked a long way, hoping to find food by chance.

The only good thing is that there's snow everywhere, so you can just bend down and take a bite without worrying about dying of thirst.

However, she only eats a very small amount each time, then holds it in her mouth until it dissolves before swallowing.

Now she needs to do everything she can to keep her body temperature from dropping, and she's afraid that swallowing ice directly will make her already sensitive stomach, which is not used to the Arctic, even more vulnerable.

If you start having diarrhea at this time, it will truly be "adding insult to injury".

After running for half an hour, Guo Mi finally ran out of breath and sat down heavily on the snow, her limbs outstretched, her mouth open, gasping for air through her mouth and nose.

Suddenly, a faint breath entered her nasal cavity through the tip of her nose, and Guo Mi froze instantly!
After a while, he twitched his nose uncertainly and sniffed twice more!
The doubt in his eyes turned into shock!

Guo Mi suddenly sat up and turned around to look behind her!

...All around was a blanket of white snow, with only a few withered tree branches protruding from the snow and one or two protruding rocks, and nothing else.

Unconvinced, Guo Mi rolled over, stood up, took two steps back, and then took two deep breaths.
The icy cold air rushed into my nasal cavity.

Although her sense of smell was weakened by the cold weather, she wouldn't be mistaken; it was the scent of those two little bears!
Guo Mi scratched at the snow with her front paws impatiently, her eyes scanning her surroundings.

She's been running for half an hour already, so she shouldn't be able to smell the bear anymore.

There are only two possibilities for her to smell the bear now: one is that the two little fur balls have secretly followed her.

The other one, which she didn't want to face even more, was—

Has she lost her sense of direction for the past half hour and been going around in circles in the same place?!

Guo Mixin's heart sank to the bottom. If that were really the case, it would mean that she could easily get lost in the snow!

This is really not good news.

She looked around, finally fixing her gaze on a dead tree branch in the distance, then raised her paw and trotted toward the tree.

If you set a goal before each run, the chances of getting lost should be much lower.

Just behind the trail of footprints Guo Mi left behind, a tiny head suddenly popped out of the snow, its little paws stepping on the huge paw prints she had left behind, and turned back to ask in bewilderment:

Why did she run back?

Another, slightly larger polar bear cub also crawled out of the snow. Looking at the long trail of footprints left in the snow, DouDou also looked puzzled.
"do not know."

The little male bear lowered its head and sniffed the footprints left by Guo Mi, then rubbed against its sister:
"Do we really have to go with her?"

“Yes.” The other bear cub seemed quite opinionated.

"Currently, she seems to be the only bear that won't attack us. Following behind her, we can use her scent to disguise ourselves as our mother. Other bears will then think we are still cubs with a mother, which will prevent them from following us by scent and killing us."

The little bear became a little sad when his mother was mentioned, and his small ears drooped.

The other bear cub licked his forehead reassuringly, stood up, and took the lead in following in Guo Mi's footsteps:
"Let's go." On the other side, Guo Mi ran for another half hour, and then...

To her horror, she discovered she could smell the scent of a mother bear's carcass!
Looking at the increasingly familiar scenery around her, Guo Mi hesitated, raising her paw as if to take a step forward, but then put it down and sat on the ground with a thud.

what happened? !
The bear's scent still lingered faintly, and Guo Mi suddenly thought of something, her eyes lighting up!
If she can smell the cubs and the mother bear, she can smell her own scent too!
Thinking of this, she quickly lowered her head, pressed her nose tightly against the ground, and began to smell her own scent, then consciously tried to remember it.

Many animals rely on scent to orient themselves; it's an innate talent they possess.

Humans don't have such a keen sense of smell. Although Guo Mi has been a bear for a long time, she hasn't fully adapted yet. In addition, the original forest had lush flowers, grasses and trees, making it much easier to recognize than the roads here. So she didn't even think of using this talent.

The scenery may be similar, but the smell is unique!
As long as you remember your own scent, you won't have to worry about going in circles while traveling, and you can also follow the scent you left behind back to the place you want to go.

That way you won't have to worry about getting lost at all!

Guo Mi gave herself a mental thumbs up, then rested for a while before choosing a new direction and starting to run like crazy!
The two bear cubs followed Guo Mi's scent back to the spot, then looked at each other in the direction she had left. The male bear cub said in a tearful voice:
"Sister, I can't run anymore."

The larger bear gritted its teeth and followed:

"Keep going! Even if you can't run anymore, keep running! We have to survive!"

Two hours later, Master Xiong, who had been busy all day for nothing, finally gave up looking for the seaside and collapsed on the snow in despair.

Guo Mi pressed her face tightly against the snow, exhaling puffs of white mist. She was somewhat dejected; it seemed she was destined to go hungry today.

At the same time, the scents of other creatures flow into the nasal cavity with each breath.

There were two flavors, and one of them smelled very familiar – it was from those two little bears!
Guo Mi opened her eyes. Now she was sure she wasn't going in circles anymore. So, she had two little tails following her?!
She carefully observed her surroundings, trying to find the two little fur balls, but to no avail.

The polar bear's snow-white fur is a natural camouflage in the icy wilderness. Moreover, although her sense of smell is greatly reduced, she can still smell scents from a kilometer away.

In other words, the two bear cubs were likely not even in her field of vision.

Guo Mi, having searched in vain, finally gave up.

Let them follow, she'll just pretend she didn't smell them. Anyway, she's definitely not going to bring them along!
Thinking of this, Guo Mi lay back down on the snow, closed her eyes, and began to rest.

Running for a long time is too exhausting, and since it's daytime and the temperature hasn't dropped to an unbearable level yet, Guo Mi just lay down in the snow and fell asleep without realizing it.

I don't know how much time passed, but suddenly I heard a dense and messy sound of snow being trampled and collapsing, and the sound grew louder and louder in a short while!

Guo Mi was startled awake. She looked up, confused, in the direction from which the sound came.
Two tiny white tufts of fur emerged from the top of a snow slope, tumbling and crawling as they raced toward her!

Guo Mi blinked, squinted to get a better look, and then two seconds later, an even larger figure appeared at the top of the snow slope!

Image from documentary:

Polar Bear, the Ice Detective

No prize for guessing: Did Guo Mi actually get lost at first?


(End of this chapter)