sjar Chapter 399 Old Qin Joins the Team
Chapter 399 Old Qin Joins the Team
That evening, Zhao Pao led three falconers into Li Ju'an's group.
Early the next morning, Li Ju'an led Zhao Pao, the Lu brothers, a total of 8 people, 9 hunting dogs, and 7 falcons into the rat-catching area near the Dashan Forest Farm.
These three hills are connected, and this area is also where the forest farm received requests for help from the village chiefs of several nearby villages.
The farmland of Lijiatun, as well as the surrounding villages of Xiaoling, Wangxingtun, and Chenjiatun, has been severely damaged by the grazing sheep.
Autumn was not yet over, and the ground was covered with holes, with roots that had been gnawed everywhere.
Potatoes, sweet potatoes, and other root crops yielded nothing that year due to the barren land. Old Qian's wife from Xiaoling Village, seeing Li Ju'an's group from afar, waved excitedly and shouted, "You've finally arrived! Little Li, have you been doing well lately?"
Li Ju'an hadn't been to Xiaoling Village for a long time. He and Lu Zhiqiang had stayed at the Qian family's house for one night before, and the fried rice cooked by Qian's sister-in-law in the earthen stove was delicious.
When Lu Zhiqiang saw Sister Qian wearing an apron and greeting him warmly, he thought of the fried rice with cured pork, especially the crispy rice crust at the bottom of the iron pot. His mouth watered. He wiped his mouth and excitedly greeted Sister Qian, shouting, "Sister-in-law! Our Li Ju'an is doing very well. Today, we'll start our search around your house."
Sister-in-law Qian was also happy. She quickly wiped herself on her apron and led a few people to check on the land that the Qian family had been allocated.
This cornfield was supposed to be harvested in the fall, but now the corn stalks have been mostly eaten away, and the fallen corn kernels have been completely devoured.
When crops like wheat ripen, the sheep steal them and eat them, and that's not enough for them. They even dig holes to store grain, and their reproductive capacity is very strong.
Sister-in-law Qian sighed and said, "Our village still has a seed bank, but all the seeds in it have been eaten. Old Qian and his men spent a lot of time digging out the clothes moth and rat holes, but guess what they found?"
"What did you dig up?"
"What a huge bag of grain, all that bear-like ground sheep that hid it away for the winter."
Li Ju'an ran to the field to take a look. These ground sheep were very good at digging holes, and unlike rats, they dug holes close to the surface of the soil.
As the round, plump body crawls underground, it leaves very obvious traces on the ground, creating mounds of earth. Once you see these mounds, it's almost certainly the burrow of the earth sheep.
When Aunt Zhao saw the rat-catching team from the forest farm arrive, she quickly ran over to greet them, complaining, "That's right, those things have claws like shovels, shoveling dirt away. The roots of all the crops growing in our fields are destroyed, and the fruit tree seedlings are sickly and can't be planted. I don't know if the old man will buy new seedlings next year. All of this costs money!"
Li Ju'an, being a fruit tree grower himself, naturally knew the preciousness of fruit tree saplings. Good saplings required a great deal of effort to cultivate, and it might take several years before they could possibly bear fruit. Who could possibly tolerate having their hard-earned saplings' root systems damaged by the wild sheep?
The villagers of Xiaoling Village all gathered around, each one speaking of the earth sheep with righteous indignation, nameless anger rising from their chests, their blood rushing to their heads, their chests burning with rage.
"Li Pao is here! Let's go 'Hit the Sheep'!"
"Look, Li Pao, our village is full of these raised mounds of soil now."
"Old Zhang had a wild goat in his field, but after two months, it multiplied into several. Two months later, the wild goats all ran off to the Sun family and the Zhao family. In a field of only 100 square meters, wild goats can reproduce a lot."
"Of course! Our ground sheep in the backyard has given birth, and we can hear the sounds. It's even more annoying than a big rat."
Lu Zhiqiang said, "You drugged them, didn't you? Did you drug them?"
Captain Wang of Xiaoling Village was alarmed and rushed out to greet the rat-catching team members.
Captain Wang slapped his thigh and exclaimed in a mix of excitement and frustration, "We absolutely have to use poison! How can we not use poison? We've tried everything – baiting, setting traps, even flooding the area with water!"
Lu Zhiqiang quickly asked, "How about it? Even if we use water to dredge it, how could we not dredge it out? Let's dredge it up until it dies!"
The villagers of Xiaoling Village all fell silent. Aunt Zhao sighed and said, "The irrigation has flooded the land, so our crops won't be easy to harvest. Besides, we can't even irrigate them properly."
The surrounding fields were all muddy. Even drawing water for irrigation meant flooding the fields, causing further hardship for the villagers. In the end, only a small portion of the land in Diyangdong was submerged; the villagers were the first to suffer.
Lu Jinyang asked, "Was it smoky?"
"Smoke? Of course we smoked! We've tried everything. Captain Wang has choked on the smoke several times, and it almost burned down the fields."
The villagers were both amused and exasperated, while Captain Wang sighed repeatedly.
He slapped his old face, really going all out, not caring about his reputation, and complained, "We've been in this village for so long, and this is the first time we've encountered such an annoying thing. Li Pao, if it were a wild boar, we could just hire a team of hunters to shoot it down."
“There are so many sheep here, and they run around everywhere. It’s hard to drive them out of a single hole. We’ve even asked Qin Pao to set snares, and we’ve set quite a few traps.”
Upon hearing this, Li Ju'an's eyes lit up. He knew that Qin Pao, the "Trap King" from Changbai Mountain, had also been here. He asked, "Qin Pao is here too? How did his traps fare?"
Captain Wang pointed to the simple brick buildings, which were the village officials' office building, and said, "Qin Pao is inside, asleep from exhaustion."
Li Ju'an handed the land over to Zhao Pao, instructing Zhao Pao to lead his men to catch the animals in the field. He left the hunting dog behind and took Falcon and Big Tiger to Captain Wang's office building to find Old Qin.
Old Qin was, after all, his mentor who taught him how to set traps. Besides, he wanted to talk to Old Qin about the wolf's eyes.
The brick house was simple, an ordinary bungalow. Old Qin was dozing off on the sofa, with a small animal curled up in its den in a cage beside him; it was impossible to tell what it was.
As soon as Li Ju'an entered the room, the sound of Da Hu's toes clicking on the ground alerted Lao Qin, who opened his eyes.
Upon seeing Li Ju'an, he was filled with surprise and said, "Little Li? What brings you here? Didn't Sun Quande come?"
After Li Ju'an briefly explained the situation to Lao Qin, he understood the reason.
Originally, Lao Qin and Sun Quande were on the same team. Sun Quande patted his chest and assured Lao Qin that he could take over the rat-catching team in the forest farm, and told Qin to just wait for news.
Qin Pao didn't receive any news from Sun Quande. Instead, he heard that a young rat-catching team was going to Xiaoling Village. He hurriedly came to Xiaoling Village to scout ahead. After seeing the situation of the ground rats, he couldn't sit still either. He busied himself with the villagers, catching the annoying ground rats.
Qin Pao said, "This job doesn't really pay well, it's not profitable at all. Sun Quande only cares about the few guns and bullets the forest farm gives him. It's just hard work."