A set table

My mother is a PhD candidate in biology, and her work often takes her on forays. The last time she took me with her, we had to climb some mountain along the steepest slope only because some professor half a century ago had described a new subspecies of feather grass on that slope, which needed to be confirmed 55 years later. Incidentally, we never found the feather grass, but I got such a sunburn that I couldn't move the next day. But this story is about a different expedition, one I wasn't on.

That time, my mother and three other PhD candidates, accompanied by two guides (who were also environmental scientists), went to the Seim River area in Ukraine. They walked about fifteen kilometers, then decided to find a grove of trees and pitch tents there, so they could have shade and firewood nearby. We walked about three hundred meters—and there it was, the grove, just right, with a river right next to it. Looking around, they saw a table by the river—a long one, about three meters long and a meter and a half wide, covered with a tablecloth, and a ton of food on it: baked potatoes, suckling pig, several rings of homemade sausage, greenfinch, tomatoes, a half-meter-wide loaf of bread, a hefty bottle of moonshine... The tired travelers just salivated and walked away. They lit a fire and started cooking stew. It was already evening, and no one had come to the table—the table stood there with a pile of food, and no one came...

So, they spent the night there. In the morning, they woke up, and the first thing they did was look at the table. The table was in the same state as the evening before. Well, one of the guides couldn't take it anymore—he went and poured himself some moonshine into a flask, poured it himself, devoured some sausages... Having finished his business, he returned, pleased with himself. Everyone started making fun of him, saying he didn't want anything in life except free booze. Then they went about their business, finished, packed up, and moved on.

They returned the same way a day later. And guess what had changed on the table? Nothing had changed. Everything was still there, fresh, not even thinking of spoiling. They decided to stop in the same spot. Just as they were starting to get settled, someone shouted, "Look, wolves!" and pointed to the other bank. Everyone looked—and there on the other bank were two wolves galloping. They ran into the water and began swimming straight across the river. Incidentally, the Seim is the fastest river in Ukraine. Although it's flat, the current's speed wouldn't allow a human to swim properly, let alone wolves. But those two swam across as if on a longboat. The scientists were probably quite frightened, but the wolves didn't attack them; they ran up to the table and began devouring everything on the table. They ate everything, even the loaf of bread, and only missed the moonshine. Having finished their feast, they jumped into the river and swam back to the other bank. My mother and everyone else there stood rooted to the spot until the creatures disappeared from sight.

After that, the expedition spent another night there, and the owner of the table never showed up. It remained unclear who had set the table with the delicacies there. And the man who had poured the moonshine into a flask nearly died of botulism at home: apparently he contracted it from the food on that very table. That's the story.