Wildlife Watch

This is a puzzle with 2 answers. One answer comes from the image clues and one answer comes from the word clues. The image of many animals at the top is shared between them, with each animal type being used once.

Images

We start by identifying each image, using the enumeration for confirmation. We notice that the flavortext “Keep an eye out for young animals trying to sneak through the creek or burrow in the furrow” clues young animals as well as a rhyming mechanic, since sneak/creek and burrow/furrow are rhyming pairs.

We notice that some of the words rhyme with words for baby animals, such as DAM/LAMB and TUB/CUB. In addition, the baby animals that are used have the corresponding adults drawn in the image of many animals.

We can identify all of the rhyming baby animals, using the fact that they have to be pictured in the image to help. Then, we write down how many of each animal we can spot (as clued by the flavortext) and use that to index into the original word.

Image	Word	Rhyme	Animal	Count	Letter
	DAM	Lamb	Sheep	1	D
	TUB	Cub	Bear	2	U
	YAWN	Fawn	Deer	4	N
	GRID	Kid	Goat	1	G
	BOLT	Poult	Turkey	1	B
	BOWIE	Joey	Kangaroo	5	E
	JUGGLE	Puggle	Platypus	6	E
	HAT	Spat	Oyster	3	T
	SLINKY	Pinkie	Mouse	2	L
	GLUTEUS	Pluteus	Sea Urchin	5	E

This gives us the first answer, DUNG BEETLE.

Word clues

We start by solving each word clue, using the enumeration for confirmation. We notice that the flavortext “Pay close attention and you may be able to hear some of the animals too!” clues a sound mechanic.

We notice that some of the words have animal sounds hidden within them, such as NEIGHborhood or hoMEOWner. We can identify all of the hidden sounds and pair these with the corresponding animals. Then, the same as for the image clues, we write down how many of each animal we can spot (as clued by the flavortext) and use that to index into the original word.

This gives us the second answer, PLAY GAME.

Authors' Notes

Many thanks to Tracey for drawing all of the super cute animals!