Aww... It’s a cute baby dragon. It has shiny gold horns.

And look! It has gotten bigger! It must be close to maturing.

Young dragons are relatively defenseless. They are born with relatively soft scales, which are shed and replaced with harder ones as the hatchling matures. Once a hatchling’s wings grow in, it typically marks the beginning of maturation. At this point they are often capable of hunting on their own and are usually left alone by their mother.

This hatchling was stalked by a poacher who wanted her bright gold horns. However, she is particularly smart for her breed and caught onto his presence quickly. To teach him a lesson, she set up a number of traps and led him into them one by one:

-A pit trap covered with leaves easily caught him when he was intent on running to keep up with her. It took him a while to climb out.

-Several vine traps carefully laid within one clearing ensured that he was scooped up by one of them when crossing it. He awkwardly retrieved his boot knife to cut himself out, falling ten feet and breaking his shoulder on landing.

-Lured into a shallow puddle of water, he got a nasty shock when she shot electricity into it.

Each time, she told him to leave her alone, but he would not give up. Finally she shot apart a log he was on when crossing a very steep ravine. No one has seen him since, and she is living peacefully far from there.