Inktober VII: Crawling

It crawls up from the
Snowbank, sensing winter is
Over. Time to feed.

-Soana Frosban, Life and Death in Cloudreach

The ouraw is a six-legged beast that lives around the upper altitudes of Cloudreach. Though they mainly prey on small animals and insects that burrow through the softer earth, it has been known to attack travelers that provoke it or accidentally bump into or walk over it.

Physiology

Ouraws are hexapedal beasts with two sets of small pointed legs in the rear and a set of longer, sharper legs in the front. They possess an angled head that slopes down and to the front, with a large maw directly below it and a bulbous, serrated mass of tongues.
Ouraw skin is typically rough and ruddy-brown to match the rough mountainous terrain it resides in, though it often pales into a soft gray or bright white in the winter, blending into its snowy surroundings.

Behavior

Ouraws are burrowing beasts by nature, able to completely cover their large frames underground in a matter of seconds. While digging through earth for prey, they will extend their front limbs out to move through the ground as well as reach out for any potential animals hiding within. However, their main mechanism of finding prey is their serrated tongue, which they will stick out while crawling and use to scoop various prey into their mouth.
After such a hunt, ouraws will often burrow back up to the surface and rest, leaving their backsides exposed to the air. Most suspect this is to replenish any air it may have spent while digging around, while others think this is a mechanism meant to regulate its body temperature. It is also quite effective for securing additional food, as its camouflage will make most surface-dwelling prey unaware of the ouraw's presence until it bumps into or walks over it, at which point the ouraw will reflexively spear it with one of its forelimbs.
From the months of Nofield to Clearwind, Ouraws will lay their eggs before entering a state of hibernation. During this time, ouraw mothers will be extremely sensitive to any unnatural disturbances, acting on any potential threat to her children, making this time of year a poor one to march through the upper reaches of the mountain range. A few travelers fortunate enough to have escaped a broodmother's wrath write that "...he made one wrong 'tep, and we heard a hard crunch. That bea't 'prung up out of the ground fa'ter than we even reali'ed. By the time we had gotten to our weapon', she had already made a hole in three of our men."