Sensing solidity, a herd of wild goats brushed past the patient, persistent Drounge as it made its way northward. Tainted blood and other impure drippings promptly stained their flanks. Some hours later, their thick hair began to fall out in ragged clumps. One by one they grew dizzy and disoriented, dropping to their knees or keeling over on their sides. Tongues turned black and open lesions appeared on freshly exposed skin. Pregnant ewes spontaneously aborted deformed, stillborn fetuses, and the testicles of rams shrank and dried up.
Eyes bulging, black tongues lolling, the toughest and most resilient of them expired within a day. Vultures and foxes came to feast on the dead, only to shun the plethora of tempting carcasses. Something in the wind kept them away despite the presence of so much easy meat. It was a smell worse than death, more off-putting than disease. The fennecs twitched their astonishing ears as they paced uneasily back and forth, keeping their distance yet reluctant to abandon such a tempting supply of food. Vultures landed near the bodies, fanning the air with their dark, brooding wings. Accustomed as they were to the worst sort of decay, a couple took tentative bites out of the belly of a stinking ram.
Within minutes they were hopping unsteadily about. Feathers began to fall away. The hooked, yellow beak of one bird developed a spreading canker that rotted the face of its owner. Within an hour both hardened scavengers lay twitching and dying alongside the expired goats.