How effective my speech was, I didn't know. I hoped it was at least enough to get them to get to know Amy and Marcella a bit better. From what Molly and I had seen of similar incidents in places we had been earlier, the problem wasn't so much that people were lead to hate those that were different, but that they refused to get to know those they hated. And that meant that whatever lies that were being fed to them were not countered by anything. All those people had were the words of hatred coming from whoever fed it to them. And if people honestly got to know Amy and Marcella, I was certain, the high school students would come to appreciate them.
Now, of course some things might not work very easy. The attack had convinced Amy to take the Serum, and on the days that I had caught the odd glimpse of Amy over the past couple of days, she had been looking through the same guidebook that I had seen "Marcel", now Marcella looking at. I assumed that Amy was also talking a lot with Marcella about the instincts that were now just as much a part of Marcella's being, as a tiger's instincts to hunt and stalk deer were part of mine. But, Animal-People still faced a fairly rough road in many places. Even with it being sold "over the counter" in the US and internationally, there were still too few Animal-People out there for all of the "Beauregards" and "Hiremans" to be gone.
People would still fear Animal-People because of the fear of their instincts. Tigers were big and powerful predators, and the top "cat" in Asia. And they did on occasion kill people. The Bengal Tigers of the Sundarbans region carried a bad reputation as man-eaters. And not all killers of men in the wild were mammals. After meeting Patten's cousin, Clemens, I had done a little research on the species of snake that Clemens had become, the African Rock Python. In nature the snake was highly aggressive and was responsible for some deaths in Africa, and there were even claims that small children had been eaten by these large pythons. And there was even one report of a child killed by an African Rock Python someone had owned as a pet in the US.
Now, of course, Molly and I weren't going to attack and eat people. And we doubted that Clemens would attack someone either. It was a long standing battle that a lot of Animal-People struggled with trying to demonstrate that they were not controlled by their instincts. And there were as yet, just not enough Animal-People to make those fears go away. The one thing that would be going in Amy's favor was that no one feared a House Cat.
"So, how did it go?" Officer Barnes asked me as I returned to the DARE office after the assembly.
"I think it went okay," I managed to shrug, "I don't know how effective what I said will be... but hopefully it'll work."
Officer Barnes nodded and took a sip from a cup of coffee that he had on the desk that we were to share as the DARE officers. It was a little surprising to see that he had brewed a fresh pot of coffee, despite the fact that we were going into the afternoon. I was tempted to tease him a little that he shouldn't drink too much or he'd be up all night, but I decided not to. Officer Barnes didn't like being behind a desk, and while the things related to the reporters and the attack gave him something to keep his mind off the fact that we were essentially on desk duty... it was clear that Officer Barnes preferred being on patrol duty to being at a desk.
"Anything happen while I was out?" I asked him after a moment.
"Officer Howard did call while you were out," Officer Barnes answered, "Mostly just a head's up... nothing more then that."
"So the teens have made bail?" I wondered.
"Some of them made it quicker then others," Officer Barnes replied, "the thing is that all of them have been released into their parent's custody until the trial."
"So, they're going to be charged as minors..." I sighed.
I knew it sounded wrong, but the part of me that felt responsible for Amy and Marcella being attacked wanted them to be charged as adults. If charged as minors, they'd be released as soon as they turned eighteen. And since most of them were seventeen... they would have at most one year think over how what they had done was wrong. Now, of course Abigail Tin would probably catch "hell" from her mother, but teenage rebelliousness rarely responded to parental attempts to discipline them. And every teen went through those stages. Normally though... they were related to staying up late or who they date. And what the attackers had done was not something so trivial, and I would have preferred them to see a few years in the state penn to think about what they had done. Marcella didn't deserve to be sexually molested while Amy didn't deserve to have her ribs broken.
"Those that are under eighteen will be charged as minors, yes," Officer Barnes nodded, "the judge was willing to show leniency since those that are under eighteen are minors... giving them a shot a second chance... which I don't know... may be a good thing. If they do learn their lesson... wouldn't you want a second chance?"
"On some level, yeah," I agreed, "I guess some of the guilt that I've had isn't in that much of a forgiving mood..."
"Can't throw the book at everybody," Officer Barnes shrugged, "and anyway, how they're charged isn't the important thing at the moment. Our responsibility with them is to make sure they don't decide to come back to school grounds."
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
The rest of the day went quietly. My walk home went quieter and slower then it normally did. A lot of it had to do with the update in regards to the case involving the teens that had attacked Amy and Marcella. Even if one of them was the kid of another officer, what they did was wrong beyond belief. Of course, they were in the system and were scheduled for a court appearance. Officer Barnes and I had done all that we could do when it came to dealing with them. The only other thing that could be done by us was to maintain security around the high school. Since they were suspended and facing legal prosecution, school policy wouldn't allow them back on school grounds, and it would obviously fall to Officer Barnes and I to make sure they followed those rules... that is so long as we weren't called to other places.
And as I walked home, that is what my was busy thinking over. In theory it wasn't too hard a thing to do. The school locked all the doors but the front door during the day to make sure that anyone who didn't have keys had to go in through the front doors and past the office. It would make things easy in the morning, as I still stood guard to make sure no one else pulled anything on Amy and Marcella. But at other times of the day, there were ways around those things. They could pry other doors open, or trail the PE classes after they'd had a session outside, or sneak in through one or two classrooms that had fire exits to the outside that were occasionally left open. And for the moment, those teachers did leave he door open. It was October now... but the weather had been fairly mild so far.
My best solution was to run one foot patrol around the exterior of the building after all the students went in. That would make sure no one was sneaking in and would let them know that I was on the ball, if they were plotting some sort of trick. As a result of this, though, I didn't meet up with Molly on the way home and I was certain that she had made it back to our cabin before I did.
And my guess was proved right, but Molly wasn't where I expected her to be. I expected her to be somewhere inside the Cabin, likely watching the news or some other program on television. And if she were doing that, I had planned on joining her there. Instead of that, however, I found her near the closed door to our garage where she was sniffing at something. Something was up.
"Molly!" I called to her as I approached, "what is it?"
"Something was here," Molly answered back, "I caught a whiff of something as I was going in and came over to have a look..."
I slowly walked toward where she was standing. The heightened sense of smell was one of the few pluses of being an Animal Person that Molly and I accepted, and I obviously trusted her when she said she smelled something.
"Did something go wrong at the High School?" Molly asked as I approached, "since you've been doing the DARE work so far, we've normally walked home together."
And normally we did. But today, I had been thinking to myself over other things.
"Nothing went wrong," I shrugged, "at least I don't think anything went wrong. I was just thinking over things."
"Like what?" Molly wondered.
"Making sure the teens that attacked Amy and Marcella don't come back onto school property," I answered, "Nothing real big."
"I see," Molly nodded.
As I got closer, my own nose caught the traces of what Molly had smelled when she had returned to Bandhavgarh Cabin. It smelled somewhat familiar, but not very much so. For a moment, I couldn't quite put my finger on it, but after a moment, I could. It wasn't so much from a sense of smell but what I saw in the dirt near our garage.
"I think it's a bear," I commented somewhat nervously.
"A bear... don't they hibernate this time of year?" Molly asked, "or start hibernating?"
"I don't know," I sighed, "but the tracks are too big to be a dog's... and far to broad to be a dog's... and you can see claw marks in the dirt, which means it wasn't a species of cat," I sighed, "Not to mention that the animal has a long rear foot... like the heal touches the ground."
It was those tracks that clinched that it was a bear, not some other predator. Most animals had a digitigrade foot. The bones in the arch of the foot were long, and the animal either ran with only its toe tips touching the ground in the case of hoofed animals, or the ball of their foot and their toes touched the ground the way my feet and Molly's were arranged. Bears, however, had a foot structure more like a human's in the sense that their heal touched the ground. Bears, humans, and some great apes had a plantigrade foot where the heal touched the ground. And this was obviously a bear because no human had claws.
"What kind of bear is it?" Molly asked, "and what did it want?"
I then opened the garage door to make sure the bear hadn't managed to get the door up and then got in. Fortunately, there seemed to be no sign of that.
"More then likely it's a Black Bear," I sighed, "you remember the first case in the Washerman investigation?"
"Yeah," Molly nodded from behind me as we went in. I shut the garage door behind us. "The lost cattle from the Ames' ranch. You said a Grizzly got one the cows that were let out."
"Yes... well... this bear doesn't smell like that bear did," I answered, "and I'm not talking about individual scents, now... but something broader... like this scent says Black Bear and the other scent said Grizzly... although I never decided to track that bear and find out what it was. I just assumed it was a Grizzly."
"So you think that's what Black Bears smell like?" Molly asked.
"I think so," I answered, "though, I could be wrong and this is a Grizzly and what I smelled while searching for the Ames' cattle was a Black Bear... we don't have enough experience with these things to be one hundred percent certain."
Molly gave a soft sigh, "What do you suppose it wanted?"
"Given that he seemed to pace the garage door... he had wandered by and caught the scent of the kills we made during the hunting season and was looking for an easy meal," I answered.
"So, what do we do?" Molly asked, "If we have cubs this mating season... they'll likely be born some time next fall, provided my gestation period remains a human's nine months... I don't want a bear that could eat them hanging around."
I nodded in agreement, "I don't want a bear around either. He clearly wanted to get at OUR food. Maybe to stock up for the winter or something... but there is only one thing we can do. And that is call animal control or a game warden. Someone who's job is to deal with these sorts of things."
"Couldn't we just run it off?" Molly asked, her voice half nervous and half concerned, "chase into the mountains beyond Bandhavgarh?"
"That would be harassing wildlife and a crime," I answered, "we need to let professionals handle this. If it's come once... it may come again and they can live trap it and move it somewhere else with no harm to it or us... and would mean we wouldn't have to risk a fight with something that could very well be a Grizzly... because as I said, beyond knowing that that is a bear's scent in general... my assumption on its species is a guess."
To that, Molly nodded.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
And call a professional was precisely what we did. The first guy to arrive was a game warden, who had apparently just been at Dave's vineyard the day before. I had changed out of my uniform by the time he arrived, but I did show him to where the prints where and where Molly and I had caught the bear's scent. He bent over and looked at it for a moment.
"Yeah... American Black Bear, alright, the bear prints aren't big enough to be a Grizzly's and the claw marks are smaller, you got a Black Bear," the warden commented, "along with two sets of tiger tracks going through the bear tracks... but I'd suppose those would be yours...eh?"
"Yes, the tiger tracks are my wife's and mine," I nodded.
"Shouldn't he be hibernating by now?" Molly asked from where she stood, "I mean, winter isn't that far off..."
"It isn't, but a lot of hibernation depends on the individual bear," the game warden answered, "the black bear will go to hibernate between October and November. So while a lot of them start hibernating now... not all of them do... and judging by some of the stuff that's been going on around here of late, I'd say you've got the same bear as your neighbor up the street does..."
He then pointed up toward Dave's vineyard and home.
"The bear's been threatening Dave?" I asked, forgetting that the game warden probably wouldn't know David Choir by his first name.
"Never got the name, but the guy runs a vineyard further up the road," the warden answered, "the bear hasn't threatened him, his wife, or his daughter, but he's found signs of something eating his grape vines. I've set a couple of live traps up there, in case he comes back to the area. They're baited... and hopefully the bear will find them to be more attractive then the grapes."
"Could you leave one here?" I asked him, "if it attacks us, I'm fairly certain Molly and I can deal with a lone Black Bear... but I really don't want things to come to that..."
The game warden slowly sighed, "I suppose. Why do you think he'd be interested in your cabin here, though? Have you two been feeding bears?"
"No," Molly spoke, "our deep freeze is in our garage and since we can only digest meat, it is full of meat."
"We also butcher our own deer kills from the hunting season in our garage," I told him.
"You do your own butchering?"
"Yes," I nodded.
"What do you do with what you don't eat?" the warden asked, "the entrails and such?"
"That stuff we take down to the butcher shop," I sighed, "when we first moved here and I bought Molly's hunting tags for her... as at that time I hadn't become a tiger-person yet, the guy who ran the place fell in line with Pierre Beauregard's R.A.M. movement, and wouldn't do that work for us. The best we could do with him was to get some agreement that he'd agree to process anything we didn't want... though we take a lot more meat then most human hunters do."
"I can guess," the warden commented, "now, so long as you aren't feeding these bears, you shouldn't have a lasting problem... but I would warn you that if you are butchering your own meat here, you will have them coming along from time time. They are mundane predators looking for an easy meal. And if they smell something that smells like food... they'll go for it."
"We understand," I answered, "and as I said, Molly and I could probably handle a Black Bear easily and probably make enough noise to deter a Grizzly... but I would prefer to avoid having an all out fight with them... and I'd tend to think you'd prefer it if we left the wildlife alone too."
To that the game warden nodded.
"So you'll leave a live trap here?" Molly asked him.
"Yes," the warden nodded, "in the present case, both here and at the vineyard up the road, I think the bear is probably pretty young. Just on his own looking for a new range. Catching him shouldn't be too hard."
The game warden then left for the moment, but did return half an hour later with a live bear trap being towed behind his truck. If the bear returned, he'd hopefully be caught in the trap, and would be moved to another location.