227 The Electric Eel Cannot, But It Can

After feeding the eagle with water, Chen Fan sat on the chair and gazed intently at the bare bird. After an eagle was just born, it had to be fed five to six times everyday, and its diet had to be balanced in nutrition. So, it was definitely a troublesome job.

The eagle already weighed over 35 kilograms when it was born, meaning that it had to eat at least 2.5 kilograms of lean meat each meal, and its food intake would double every few days.

"Seems like I need to find a beef supplier for it!" Grinning, Chen Fan ran to the computer and sent a post on the local forum, stating that he would like to purchase a large amount of raw beef.

Beef contains a high amount of protein and a low amount of fats, and normal eagle trainers like to feed their eagles with beef, so that they will obtain enough nutrition, without growing too fat.

The post was soon replied by some people who had relatives or friends that sold beef. Copying down two numbers, Chen Fan went up to the sea surface and called the numbers, saying that he would like to purchase a large amount of beef.

At the time, there were already very few butchers in the cities and suburbs, who would buy cows back, kill them, and sell their meat. Instead, many were merchants who would buy fresh frozen beef from the slaughterhouse wholesale, then cook and color the beef, before then selling it wholesale to food markets. Beef, just like old pork, would become too soft if cooked for too long. Thus, civilians liked to buy processed beef, so that they would not have to spend time cooking it themselves.

Hearing that Chen Fan intended to buy large amounts of fresh beef for a long period of time, the other party immediately agreed. "No matter how much you want, we can provide it!"

In addition, they could provide delivery services. Just by asking for more products from the slaughterhouse, they could earn a lot of money. Of course they would be eager to agree.

The delivery location was set at the dock. Chen Fan had requested them to send only waist meat, meaning filet mignon or loin, which were the most tender parts of the beef! The next morning, the merchant sent a Mazda eagerly out, with a hundred kilograms of waist meat, to the dock.

The merchant, who was over thirty years old, thought that Chen Fan was the owner of some western restaurant, and was delighted that he had found such a big customer. Taking over the money, he patted his chest and promised that he would deliver more beef whenever Chen Fan requested. He even cheekily promised that, if the beef was not fresh, he would take out his eyeballs and step on them!

Taking the beef into the cave, Chen Fan took out a few pieces and put them into the meat grinder, just like calcium tablets. After grinding, he used a spoon to open the eagle's mouth, then fed it with the beef, like he was taking care of a patient with a severe illness. At the start, the eagle kept resisting, but after having a taste of the beef, it instinctively continued eating.

After two days, Chen Fan asked the merchant to send 200 more kilograms of beef. Meanwhile, the eagle's body, which was originally bare, now had many tiny fluffs on it. They were thickest on its wings and tail, and were a bit prickly.

At 8 in the morning that day, the eagle officially opened its jelly-like eyes and looked curiously at the world, as well as at Chen Fan, who had been busy feeding it! It could be said that the opening of its eyes had far-reaching influences on both Chen Fan and the eagle, because after an animal is born, the first moving thing that it sees will leave a deep impression in its mind. As such, the animal will treat the moving thing like its parent, especially if the moving thing can feed it.

In science, the phenomenon is known as imprinting! This imprint can easily replace the animal's parents in its mind. From a human perspective, it basically means that, the one who raises you up is more important than the one who gave birth to you.

Ducks, and fierce animals, such as Tibetan mastiffs and hawks, behave in this way as well. For a purebred Tibetan mastiff, the master must feed and stroke it everyday, before it opens its eyes. so that the dog can recognize his owner's smell, until the day when it opens its eyes and sees the master. Otherwise, nobody will be able to take the baby dog away from its mother!

This same applies when people train hawks. If they happen to catch an adult hawk, they must torture it during training. However, if they are able to catch an infant hawk, which has yet to open its eyes, the process will be much easier. The only thing they have to take note of, is to prevent the infant bird from coming into contact with another person before imprinting.

"Take precautions before it is too late!" This was the best phrase to describe the current state of Chen Fan's thoughts. Although he already took a firm first step, the path ahead was still long.

The eagle was only 2 days old. When one more month passed and the eagle could learn to fly, the space in the cave would certainly be insufficient for the eagle to maneuver. Furthermore, judging from the growth rate of the eagle, by then, the electric eel would not even be able to bring it outside. Thus, the best solution was to bring it outside and raise it up there. Then, it would at least be able to get some sunlight in the meantime.

Before Chen Fan could take it outside to raise it, he had to build a safe place on that strange land. It would even be better if he could kill the adult golden eagle.

It was actually easy to kill the golden eagle. Chen could just hide in an armored transporter and, after locating the target, use the FGM-172 Predator SRAW missile to hit the eagle. In any case, it had an automatic thermal tracking device, and would not even miss on helicopters and tanks, much less on a huge eagle. If that did not work, Chen Fan could use the rapid-fire machine gun on the vehicle to shoot the eagle.

Chen Fan decided to carry out his plans immediately. He controlled the electric eel, which passed the bizarre ripples and swam to the surface, looking for traces of the giant eagle. The electric eel waited for the whole morning, but did not find the huge eagle. Instead, it drew the white python up as well, which kept circling and harassing the electric eel.

The electric eel was to lazy to respond to the python's harassment. So, it quickly swam to the shore, trying to look for a safe place where Chen Fan could train the baby golden eagle.

The place must be, of course, close to the sea, and should preferably be a cave or the like, which would provide sufficient protection. Swimming along the coastline within ten kilometers for two rounds, the electric eel, unfortunately, did not discover any suitable targets.

Without any places available, Chen Fan decided to dig one himself, and the electric eel only had to make an opening on the hills using the spear. Lifting its head and scanning at the mountains in front, the electric eel's eyes were locked onto a huge mountain about three hundred meters tall and eight hundred meters across.

The mountain was mostly bare on its surface, with only some low-growing plants on it. On its peak, there was a protruding rock that extended for over ten meters, below which was a cliff over a hundred meters deep, making for an excellent place to train the eagle on its flying skills. In addition, the mountain was less than a hundred meters away from the sea, so it would be convenient to move between the two places.

Judging from the hardness of the spear and the strength of the electric eel, Chen Fan estimated that one day would be sufficient for the eel to dig a suitable place on the mountainside. After that, Chen Fan would install a large metallic door, a few tons in weight, at the opening of the cave. Then, the place would be extremely safe and secure!

Holding the spear, the electric eel slowly moved to the foot of the mountain. While finding a suitable place to dig the cave, the electric eel suddenly realized that, on a slope eighty meters above, there was a circular cave three meters in diameter.

"Nice!" Chen Fan exclaimed in joy. He would not even have to spend any effort digging the cave.

The electric eel hurriedly ran to the cave and, just as it was about to move his head closer to look at the depth of the cave, it smelled a faint fishy odor. Although the smell was not strong, it definitely existed, and was coming from the inside of the cave.

"There is some organism living in the cave!" After noticing a few obvious signs of activity around the cave, Chen Fan came to this conclusion!

However, he would not care about the organism inside. It would be fine, as long as he killed it!

Bang! Bang! Bang!

The electric eel lifted the spear and smashed hard onto the rocks a few times. In less than ten seconds, a monster with two small, black eyes extended its cone-shaped head out.

At first, Chen Fan thought that it was a snake, because its body was covered in a countless number of very dark green scales. However, after careful observation, he denied his own original suggestion, because it had a pair of huge yellow ears. The monster's head was long and skinny, but its body, which was hidden inside the cave, was quite fat, and closely clung to the walls of the cave.

Bang!

The electric eel stabbed the spear in an attempt to smash the organism's head, but the strike was agilely dodged by it. Furthermore, it was extremely timid. Pulling back its head, it immediately backed far into the cave, which was curved and so deep that the electric eel could not see its end.

The eel clearly could not enter the cave, which had a diameter of only three meters. It could only keep hitting the rocks around, to see if it could lure the organism out. Obviously, the electric eel underestimated the organism's timidity. After four rocks had been smashed into pieces by the spear, it still hid inside the cave, staring at the electric eel and not exiting.

The electric eel gently inserted the spear in, wanting to electrocute it. However, when the spear was only one meter into the cave opening, the organism instantly ran out of the electric eel's sight.

Indeed, after seeing a four-legged monster that was nearly one hundred meters in length carrying a spear that was thirty meters long, only an idiot would go outside the cave and get killed.

The electric eel did not have too much time to play with it. Otherwise, the water in its body would evaporate. After waiting for another hour, the organism still did not exit, and the electric eel could only go back to the sea to replenish the moisture in its body.

In this way, the electric eel moved back and forth for two times. Seeing that the organism was still not lured out of the cave, Chen Fan made up his mind to simply use a human-invented war weapon to eliminate the target.

He chose to use the AT4 portable rocket launcher from the United States Marine Corps, which could be loaded and used repeatedly, just like guns. One could only aim properly and shoot, as the missile could neither track nor curve. However, after being loaded with anti-tank armor-piercing missiles, it was an ultimate weapon that could penetrate a piece of rolled homogeneous armor that was over 40 centimeters thick!

What does 40 centimeters of tank armor mean? Well, to give perspective, even if 50 people stand in a row, the missile could still penetrate all of them! Among the weapons that Chen Fan robbed, there were two such launchers, together with eight high-explosive and eight armor-piercing missiles.

Rocket launchers were easy to use. For instructions in such use, Chen Fan went to tiexue.net and sent a post asking for the steps to shoot a rocket launcher. Soon, a lot of people gave proper replies, including two retired soldiers, who had been rocket launcher grenadiers.

Taking one rocket launcher, two armor-piercing missiles, and one light machine gun onto the armored transporter, Chen Fan closed the door and let the electric eel hold all the things in its mouth, after which, it swam towards the other space. The wheeled armored transporter, made from the Arzamas Machine-Building Plant itself, had two multi-purpose missile launchers. Unfortunately, all the operating systems were in Japanese, and the fire-control systems were fully electronic. Chen Fan had yet to understand how they worked, and therefore, could only carry out the simple task of driving it around.

After the electric eel hastily carried the armored transporter to the mountainside, Chen Fan used tools to remove the safety on the rocket launcher's front, as well as the engine cover on its back. Next, he pushed the missile gently into the launch chamber. To be honest, the launch chamber was just like a large rifle, as it did not even have an optical sight, so Chen Fan could only use manual aiming.

Opening the door at the top of the armored transporter, Chen Fan lay at the top of the vehicle and aimed the iron sight at the center of the cave. Then, he controlled the electric eel, which was waiting not far away, causing it to hit the rocks.