Ruby could smell the stench from the opposite side of their little camp.
Seaplane looked a little bit green around the gills. Oberon hyperventilated from behind him, doing his best to look as far away as was physically possible. Mouse was watching with a sort of morbid curiosity. Smolder was just poking it (from a reasonable distance away!) with a machete.
Ruby ignored all of them with the same monotonous deadpan that she tried with most things.
"It ain't gonna bite." A lesser woman might have snickered.
Ruby stuck with internal guffaws.
It was a dead rhino carcass, female from the looks of it.
Her horn was missing, a bloody stump in its place. The eyes were blank and glassy, staring listlessly onward. Her legs were bent awkwardly, more from the way Ruby had dropped her than from any real injury on the rhino's part. The dark skin was thicker than anything Ruby had ever seen and slightly muddy from being rolled painstakingly through the jungle. Thank heaven above for wheelbarrows, honestly. She could not have moved the carcass without the simple machine.
Ruby had dragged it back to camp with the intention of removing the skin for a freaking pillow, but from the looks of things, she wasn't gonna be able to skin it without a group of sick humans to deal with. Rhino skin wasn't ideal, of course, but it's not like sheep just drop dead in the middle of the African rainforests.
"I vote we leave it where we got it from." Seaplane pinched his nose.
"Seconded." Oberon nodded frantically.
"Not a chance!" Ruby growled reproachfully. "Do you know how heavy that thing was? I ain't puttin' it back."
"Western black rhino, or Diceros bicornis longipes. Females can weigh up to nine hundred kilos. Those things is practically extinct." Mouse informed them, aghast. "Chances are, this thin' was caught by a poacher. A real horrible, real lucky poacher."
"So, what?" Ruby asked, confused. This really wasn't her forte; she honestly just wanted a pillow.
"So the body's probably poisoned." Smolder cut in. "You put that thing back out there, you know how many vultures you might kill?"
"So you'se on my side?"
"...Yes."
"Jus' checkin', boss. No need to get snippy."
"Hold up." Oberon was doing a fabulous job ignoring the dead animal. "Poison?"
"Poachers kill somethin' out here, right?" Mouse offered dispassionately.
"Yeah." Seaplane nodded.
"What you think starts happenin' when a large animal carcass shows up in the wild?"
"...Decomposition?" Oberon scratched his head.
"Vultures start circling." Smolder cut in again. He had obviously gotten this lecture before. "Which helps alert rangers and police to the fact that the poaching is even happening. Solution? Get rid of the vultures." He prodded the rhino again.
"Poison the carcass," Ruby continued, realization dawning in her. "The vultures all die."
"Bingo." Mouse agreed miserably.
"But aren't vultures the freaky bald garbage men of the jungle?" Seaplane asked blankly.
"Sure," Mouse shrugged. "If freaky bald garbage men usually completely destroy all the diseases that might be clingin' to your garbage and-keep-you-and-all-your-loved-ones-from-gettin'-sick-an'-dyin'!"
His words sped up, passion and righteous fury making him spit viciously at their ignorance.
"Okay." Seaplane nodded quickly, trying to placate his friend. "Vulture equals good guy. Gotcha."
"What are we gonna do with it? If we can't put it back, I mean."
"Skin it?" Ruby offered hopefully.
Mouse gave her a look.
Ruby kicked a rock as she turned away, grumbling.
"The damn thing's poisoned." Mouse pointed out. "You tellin' me you wanna get sick again?"
"Ruby-fucking-Roundhouse never gets sick. " Ruby whispered furiously, fists clenched. Smolder patted her shoulder in a consoling manner. All she wanted was a pillow. Was that really so much to ask for?
"So we bury it?" Oberon pushed onward.
Mouse shook his head.
"We'd best burn it."
And that was that.
They moved camp two days early. Ruby stole several of Mouse's hats and Smolder's wife beaters and stitched them into a wad that could probably pass off as a pillow. At least she got what she wanted, right? Right.
