“Did you hear him? He said there was a nest around here.” Recruit Tanner whispered as he walked on point.

“Yeah, kid,” Ranger Austin said, “the Captain was right. That was a mature female we chopped down earlier…” Austin paused in the dark still of the woods, glancing around the underbrush with his gray eyes. “…a female, in mating season, with no egg sac.”

“The silk harvest was light, could be she spun the sac recently.”

“Or, maybe she just cocooned up a goat, the eggs were laid way earlier, and we’ve got to move with a purpose before those things hatch and spread out. If they spread, we’ll end up baiting every night for the next six months.”

“I don’t like baiting and hate picking out bait from the orphanage.” Tanner walked, searching the woods for signs of nests. The silence grated on him and he wondered if Austin thought him to be complaining too much. He turned to explain himself but saw nothing, and then a glint.

A sharpened edge of a weathered axe resting on a spongy feeling carpet of leaves.