Bacon! Ham! Ribs! For a moment my stomach got the better of my brain. But it was a wild boar! At the very least, food. Let's just ignore the fact that -- enormous as it was-- it was definitely smaller than whatever I saw from the tree yesterday. At least it was something edible.
Assuming we could catch it. Drooling though I was, even I knew feral pigs were not good news, and could slice you to pieces in an instant. While I had grabbed a few sharp metal shards from the plane to use as spear points on our walking sticks, they were nothing compared to the thick hide of a boar like that. While I sighed to myself in disappointment, I exchanged a look with Chris, and he seemed to agree with me that this was nothing we wanted a piece of right now. Maybe later, if we came back with some useful equipment to set a trap. But for the moment, we were just going to hide and wait it out.
Until we both saw something else moving in the brush. One of our scouting group had obviously lost his marbles. A middle-aged guy with a goatee, jeans, and a plaid shirt was trying to inch up behind the boar, holding the metal-tipped stick above his shoulder like he thought he was in the javelin throw.
"Shit!" I muttered under my breath, and after taking a glance at Chris, I knew he was thinking the same thing. The moment that boar turned this guy was gonna be dead meat. For a moment it honestly crossed my mind that if he was that stupid, maybe it would be better to just wait it out and let him take what was coming to him. However, that option blew up when I saw two other people approaching from other sides, and turning to Chris, I saw him run his hand over his cropped hair.
But even if we went down, how were were going to stop the boar? We had nothing that could actually kill it. I scanned the surroundings. Nothing there but trees. It's not like we had time to drop one of those on the boar. Wait...maybe we did.
I spotted a huge rotten branch on the next tree over, barely hanging on the tree, one of those they call a widowmaker. I could get over there by jumping across the branches. Only problem was, I didn't know for sure how much weight it would need for it to break and drop. However, if it hit the boar just right and pinned it...
I quickly whispered the outline of my plan to Chris, who received the unenviable role of being bait. If he could lure the boar over, it would be my job to drop the branch at the right moment. At the moment Chris nodded and turned to shimmy down the tree--
"AAAAAAAH!!!" a scream rang out, and Chris and I looked over just in time to see the guy with the goatee get tossed by the boar. We both took off to get in position, Chris making all sorts of wild motions to get the angry boar's attention, and me jumping from limb to limb like a veritable monkey.
Just as I reached the widowmaker, I saw Chris hauling butt in my direction. Since I didn't have time to test the strength of the branch, I readied myself where I felt the weak point of the limb was. As the boar was about to pass under me, I jumped, then using the branch above as leverage, pushed with all my might. With a huge "CRACK!" I felt the sickening sensation of weightlessness just before gravity took hold and...