marmot

the eagle's answer. colonies of fat alpine marmots on the high meadows — three to five to a slope, each with a burrow mound it dug itself on the first tick of its life. by day they graze and sit up on their rocks to watch, and the sentry silhouette is how you learn the slope is watching you back.

the whole animal is the whistle. the first to see something — you inside twelve blocks, or a shadow overhead — sounds one high note; every marmot within twelve blocks stands up and sounds it on, a beat later; and the note runs down the slope faster than you can climb it. by the time you crest the ridge the hill is empty and the mounds are just mounds. crouch and you get within five. stand still by a burrow and, one head at a time, they come back up.

underground is honest: a marmot down its hole is not in the world at all, only a record in the colony's book, and it surfaces when the slope is quiet — bright out, not winter, no one over the mouth. dusk sends them down till morning; when the seasons turn the year, winter sends them down till spring. and the seam the line was built for: an eagle's shadow starts the chain, and the eagle hunts what whistles at it. a slow one gets taken. the rest are already down.