Begin Recording
Mothers and Children
Recording by Scribe Ellison
"A deathclaw nest? Yeah. I've seen one. It was… heh. It was after Shaun came home, I spent about a month just staying home with him trying to be a housewife, I didn't go scouting or visit other settlements. It did not work for me. After the third day of pacing around snapping at people Preston grabbed me and said, "General! ...Em. You are going to go crazy and take us all with you. Put your guns on and take a walk."
"I can't leave Shaun."
"Shaun has all of us to keep him safe. He needs his real mom, not a wannabe prewar housewife."
I just about smacked Preston, except that he just sounded worried about me. Also, he was right. So I swallowed my pride, put on my armor, and agreed not to come back until I found something to add to the map.
A day or two later I ended up sheltering from the rain on an overpass with Dogmeat lounging next to me. We were on the bottom level of a two tier overpass, sheltered by the road above us. We'd found the end of our street, a long break in the road. Looking across the gap I could see a pile of stuff. Sticks and weeds, and bits of clothes and armor and bodies. It was quiet so I decided to wait and see if anything happened, at least until the rain stopped.
It was coming down hard and the air was full of the smell of wet asphalt and the moss hanging down from the level above us. I fed Dogmeat some jerky and he seemed happy to hang around. I got out my rifle and fit on the legs and my best scope to get a better look at the pile of junk across the way. Something moved in there and Dogmeat pricked up his ears.
It hopped out all of a sudden. More like a bird than a lizard, it kind of looked like a naked green chicken with a tail. A deathclaw chick!
I took my eye off the scope to check the distance between the nest and where I was. Definitely too far for an adult deathclaw to jump, and I had all my guns and Dogmeat was wearing his armor so if the mother came back we'd probably be all right.
So we watched the deathclaw chicks—there were three of them—for two hours. They tussled like kittens and pulled bits of meat from their nest to eat. When the wind changed the stink of the nest came at us and Dogmeat put his paws over his nose. Deathclaw dung is unbelievable. This was giving me second thoughts after my first thought had been if I brought one back I could have deathclaw eggs. I miss omelets. But how do you tell a male from a female deathclaw?
Then the mother came back. I didn't see her coming, she just appeared on the other side of the gap carrying most of a raider in her claws. The man was still alive but his guts were hanging out.
The sight was a shock and so the deathclaw was dangling the raider over her nest so her chicks could leap at his trailing guts before I got my rifle aimed and ended the man's suffering. I couldn't have saved him, even if I'd shot the deathclaw there aren't enough stimpacks in the Commonwealth to heal a wound like that.
The deathclaw didn't notice—silencers are great—so I watched the mother rip off bits of raider and feed them to her offspring, who gaped and made raspy little yipping sounds as they begged for scraps. It was almost fascinating, how many people have watched a deathclaw family having dinner, though I felt sorry for the dinner.
In the end I did kill them. The spot was too close to the Abernathy's and Sunshine Tidings to leave four deathclaws alive. Their next dinner could have been one of my settlers. I got the adult in one shot through the eye and once she stopped twitching I had to climb down to the ground and find a way up to the nest. That took a while; the other section of the road didn't touch the ground so I had to find a tree to push over and climb up.
When I finally got up there the chicks were crammed under their mother's body. One of them went for Dogmeat and he dispatched it in one snap. I emptied my pack and stuffed the other two chicks into it, had to use a stimpack for the gashes they left on my arms.
I got them home and we put together a pen for them. Shaun liked the new livestock.
But you will have noticed, scribe, that there are no deathclaws in took care of them, fresh water and plenty of molerats and mongrels to eat. Shaun and Kaynah tried to tame them. Doc Jenna even stuck them with stimpacks when they got sick, but they both died after a year or so. Doc said it was some disease that only deathclaws get.
So that was the deathclaw nest, and our experiment in farming living meatgrinders. It almost worked. They never gentled though, Shaun can tame the most vicious dog I ever hauled back from a raider camp but no matter how long he fed the deathclaw chicks they never stopped slashing at his hands when he came to clean the pen. I did see another deathclaw nest, but Piper was along for that so maybe she'll tell you about it.