saw the bones standing out on my hand. An icy chill ran
down my back. I returned to the tree where my gun lay,
released the safety catch and sat down in my former bivouac,
waiting to see what else would happen. After about two hours
the sky at last began to grey. A few hundred metres away the
gamecock began his courtship, the actual reason for my early
visit. I didn't move from my position, watching how this
uncanny glow slowly extinguished, and suddenly the whole
specter was over.
When at last daylight came, I returned again to the source
of the flame and on every tip of the lush green leaves I saw
oversize dewdrops, again in egg-shaped form, standing
motionless like glittering candle flames. As the first rays of
the Sun pierced the tangle of leaves, the grass-tips bent under
the weight of the ur-water, which visibly grew as the Sun's
heat increased.^9 One by one, the now finished dewdrops fell
down.
Now I began to dig into the hillock with the tip of my
mountain staff and underneath a peculiarly smelling layer of
humus, I felt a resistance, which after further digging, turned
out to be the almost undecomposed corpse of a chamois
buck, which had a clearly distinguishable bullet entry hole
above the left foreleg. There was, however, no exit hole.
According to the time of year, it could have been shot only by
poachers, since the hunting season was long past. It was only
later that it became clear to me that the buck must already
have lain underneath this mound for a longish period,
because it was covered by a thick layer of humus upon which
vegetation had apparently sprouted. On even closer
inspection, I found a sort of mass grave before me.
The old hunters used to insist that chamois (as also
happens with elephants) seek out special places to die where
slow decomposition rather than putrefaction takes place. Sick
wild animals are attracted to such places which remain
equally warm or cold in winter and in summer, seeking either
a cure or a painless death. Expressed scientifically, constant
anomaly states prevail, which permit decay-free
decomposition. This is why, as a particularly sly old forester
explained, the high clergymen had themselves buried in a
constantly cool church crypt, or why the more common
- ORGANIC CULTIVATION