Forest Ranger, starting from Picking Up a Lynx Girl

The tan stray dog, after getting cleaned and shaved, looked quite smart and attractive.

A girl from the research station, whose family ran a pet grooming parlor, helped give it a style—round-headed and plump like a glutinous rice ball dusted with brown sugar.

The girl named the stray dog Red Cotton, hoping it would blossom like a kapok flower, vibrant and splendid in life.

Red Cotton sounded like a girl's name, but in fact, it was a little male dog.

As if aware that he and the other rescued puppy were safe, the first thing Red Cotton did after eating his fill was to take a tour around the research station and stock farm, bringing back over a dozen ground squirrels that had been burrowing, which he laid out neatly in a row beside the flagpole.

"Wow, this dog is impressive! We've been wanting to clear the burrows around here. It took us three days just to find two or three, and this guy found so many in just half a day."

Chen Ying also came to join the crowd and took the opportunity to inspect the area where the burrows were.

These ground squirrels dug too many holes, seriously damaging the lawn behind the two wooden houses.

In the areas around where they dug, the soil gradually started to become sandy.

Mice and rabbits are essential base animals of the prairie ecosystem; they are the foundation of the food chain. With their presence, a more complete biological chain can exist.

But, if they are overabundant, they can cause serious damage to plants and soil.

So, everything must be done in moderation.

There's a saying, "It's none of a dog's business to catch mice," but in reality, some dogs are quite good at catching rodents. Red Cotton, for example, never came back empty-pawed. If he didn't catch anything, it was only due to a lack of strength, but never for want of finding something.

The other dogs, especially Red Lion, actually turned green with envy after seeing this.

Red Lion once led the Wangwang Team to search for rodent and rabbit holes, but the success rate was about fifty-fifty. Most of what they found were abandoned holes, and the ground squirrels and rabbits they caught were those active on the surface.

Now, with Red Cotton's super-sensitive nose and Red Lion's unbeatable digging skills, in just three days, the sight of frozen mice and rabbits by the road could make anyone sick.

Chen Ying spent the past three days mainly treating the little dog and didn't pay much attention to the other little ones. Uncle Tashi's words were not quite understood by the Wangwang Team.

After competing with Red Cotton, Red Lion, and Black Gold, they could only settle for less.

Their only benefit from this long fight was that the two lynx cubs got to have a buffet.

At first, the two fox cubs didn't dare to eat, but later on, they also started to pick and choose meat to eat along with the lynxes.

Uncle Tashi and two colleagues from the livestock station loaded the leftover meat with a snow plough and led the little pups to drag it to a small water source about a mile away, where they laid out the frozen rabbits and ground squirrels on the grass.

After the snow melted and the grass appeared again, only the withered leaves and shriveled roots remained.

This was the drinking spot for many animals, frequented by vultures and wolves as well.

The mice and rabbits, already killed, could be recycled, providing a feast for the birds and beasts struggling to find food in winter.

When they finished their work and returned, they saw Chen Ying giving a lecture to Red Lion and Red Cotton.

"It's okay to compete, but don't go too far. By doing this, if you wipe out all the surrounding mice and rabbits, what will the other animals eat? Also, if you kill indiscriminately without eating, you will affect the other animals. If they all leave, and there are only a few of you left, would that be fun?"

Red Lion barked a few times, her face full of discontent. Red Cotton, however, was quite different. It bravely admitted its mistakes and patted the ground, swearing never to be so reckless again.

Hearing Red Cotton say this, Red Lion immediately became anxious and barked chaotically, the more frantic she became, the more she struggled to express herself, almost crying with frustration.

Chen Ying noticed the triumphant little expression that Red Cotton failed to hide when lowering its head, but he couldn't reprimand Red Cotton just for this.

A stray dog must be shrewd to survive.

Compared to Red Cotton, Red Lion is like a pampered little princess; talented, well-born, and as anticipated, a bright future—a bit more naïve naturally.

Chen Ying picked up Red Lion to console her for a while. She cheered up, and after getting down, she called out to the Wangwang Team to play.

Red Cotton's paw moved slightly, but in the end, it didn't follow.

It lay down by the flagpole and slowly licked its paws.

Chen Ying would not interfere in their interactions, no more than an adult would take part in children's fights.

Still, Chen Ying didn't let Red Cotton stay alone. He took out a bag of milk bottles and poured a bowl of yak milk for Red Cotton as well.

"Red Cotton, you mentioned that the pack of dogs you stayed with seems to have run off to the canyon, right? Do you know which canyon it is?"

"What are you going to do?"

"Nothing much—I just think that since it's quiet in winter anyway, why not take this opportunity to do some minor surgery on them."

Minor surgery: neutering!

Red Cotton didn't understand what "neutering" meant, but after hearing Chen from Ying say it was to prevent unfortunate little dogs from appearing again, it resolutely agreed to lead the way.

Sterilizing stray dogs is not a small project.

Males are manageable, but females are much more difficult.

To sterilize stray dogs, you first have to catch them and isolate them in cages, which requires ample space and facilities.

Generally speaking, a male dog would recover almost normally after three to four days following neutering, while a female dog's recovery would depend on the situation, with more complex cases needing at least six to seven days.

Neutering stray dogs wasn't a sudden whim for him, he had had the idea for a while now.

Red Cotton and the puppies she had been tending to only made him decide to put his thoughts into action.

Previously, when he and Dao Meihua passed through a Tibetan settlement, they saw at least a hundred stray dogs near the temple in the area.

The owner of a roadside restaurant said that these starving stray dogs would rummage through the garbage, creating a big mess around the restaurant, and if stopped, they would harm people.

The daughter of a restaurant owner near his place had been bitten by two stray dogs, which had viciously torn off a piece of flesh from her leg, leaving scars that persist to this day.

There was also a self-driving tourist who got bitten by a stray dog; if not for the local herders helping to chase the dogs away, the tourist might have been killed.

Not to mention, when these stray dogs were extremely hungry, they would even tear apart and devour one another, a sight more savage than wild beasts.

A lot of these situations were caused by humans, so as a human himself, although he couldn't shove the already born dogs back into their mothers' bellies, he could at least reduce the birth of stray dogs.

Upon learning of Chen Ying's intentions, several members of the livestock station and a few classmates from the training station were willing to help.

The students from the training station weren't very skilled at capturing dogs, but they could handle feeding them after they were caught.

The postoperative care was also handed over to them.

Before going to capture the stray dogs, they had to renovate the existing animal pens to at least be able to confine the dogs.

Previously rescued Tibetan yak calves had been confined in a large enclosure behind the emergency station, watched over by the dog wet nurse and the Wangwang Team.

The livestock station's few animal pens for the yak calves had roofs; they just needed additional protective barriers.

Uncle Tashi took responsibility for this job with a slap to his chest.

He drove out to ask a known supplier for a truckload of used building materials and spent two days building the dog cages.

The entire dog cage could accommodate more than twenty dogs, with a section designated for postoperative recovery, further divided into areas for male and female dogs, with facilities arranged according to the dogs' needs.

When the used material supplier learnt it was for surgery on stray dogs, he refused to take any money, stating that if needed in the future, they should just come to him directly. It was a good deed; he wouldn't dare accept payment as his mom and dad would scold him.

The students from the training station also contacted a volunteer organization that would come to inspect and donate a batch of supplies to ensure the daily needs of the dogs during the surgery period.

Chen Ying hadn't originally planned to reach out to these organizations, as he didn't believe it would cost much money to do this, and his salary and other income were more than enough to cover the expenses.

But the students from the training station persuaded him to accept and to promote the cause vigorously, as only by doing so could more people become aware of the stray dog problem, and more people would donate to support the stray dog neutering project.

Since it was for a good cause, Chen Ying certainly agreed.

When Yin Li heard about this, he brought over several off-duty members from the station to help out.

Two trucks, pulling cages borrowed from elsewhere, headed towards the place described by Red Cotton.

The scenery along the way was entirely different from what it had been in the summer.

When they passed the mountain where Er Niu resided, Er Niu came down to frolic with Chen Ying, learning that they were going to capture dogs, it immediately called the Snow Leopard to assist.

"It's fought those bad guys before; if you take it with you, those dogs definitely won't be able to escape."

Er Niu had never been threatened by stray dogs, but it had heard from Lady Lynx that last year, two snow leopard cubs were killed and eaten by a pack of stray dogs after their mother didn't return from hunting in time.

The mother leopard later fought with the stray dogs and couldn't win, leaving with mournful cries and injuries. Whether she survived in the end, nobody knew.

Why Er Niu was so anxious about its three cubs, and why the Snow Leopard kept such a close guard over the four of them—it was because these dangers could happen at any time.

After walking through the canyon for a while, about seven or eight kilometers later, they saw at least seven or eight stray dogs sprawling and basking on the rocks on a relatively flat mountainside stone area.

Uncle Tashi and two Mountain Patrol Team members had been here before, on the inner side of the area where the stray dogs were, there was a natural stone cave, roughly twenty to thirty square meters in size.

But this cave was a bit different from those in the inland mountainous area; to call it a cave is a bit of a misnomer, it was more accurately a cliff crevice formed by an indentation in the cliff with a relatively spacious opening. The lowest part was so short that a person could only crawl in on their knees, but dogs should be able to easily slip through.

To capture all these stray dogs and bring them back, brute force alone wouldn't suffice; they needed to outsmart them.

Food laced with a measured amount of medication was the best approach.

Chen Ying whispered to the Snow Leopard for quite a while, then signaled everyone to toss the meat laced with additives out of the truck; the vehicle continued forward and hid behind another rock formation.

The sudden appearance of the food would definitely raise the stray dogs' suspicions; at that moment, it was time for the Snow Leopard, the "best actor," to assist.

Only one piece of meat didn't have additives, but it was slathered with the Snow Leopard's saliva.

After they left, the Snow Leopard would take the stage, find that piece of meat, take it away, and eat it in a place visible to the dogs, showing that it wanted more.

These stray dogs had intelligence, but not much.

After the Snow Leopard finished without any problems and still seemed eager to continue, how could they resist? The "impotently furious" chase of Snow Leopard by a pack of dogs would achieve the perfect effect.

Sure enough, after they hid, the Snow Leopard took the stage.

But just then, a disruptive element descended from the sky.