Something weird has been going on in our back-garden (or, back-yard, as it's called in the US!) for some time now. And, it's probably a good idea to bring it to people's attention, as it's still on-going.
About three weeks ago, I found a decapitated mole in the grass, which I thought was kind of odd, and which Ken Gerhard saw when he came to visit shortly afterwards. Then, about two weeks ago, I found a large, skinned bone on the lawn - yep, picked entirely clean of meat.
But, there was far more - and much worse - to come, as the photo above shows.
Last Saturday morning, me and Dana were sitting outside when D suddenly gave out a huge scream and pointed to a paved area about eight-feet from where we were sitting.
As the photo graphically shows - and as became clear when I went over to take a close-up look at it - it was the head of a possum, which had clearly been pretty savagely torn or bitten off.
And, it was made all the more strange by the fact that this is the precise position the head was in when we found it. In other words, I didn't carefully position it for the photo. In fact, handling the ant-infested head was the very last thing I wanted to do!
The culprit? Well...I'm not sure...
But, what I can say for sure is that twice in the past year we have seen a Coyote in the street outside our house. The first time was in June of last year, when we came back from my mum's funeral in England and it raced across the road in front of us, around 8.30 at night.
The second time we saw it was during a very violent thunderstorm in May or June of this year, when - again - it was racing along the road outside our home.
Plus, although we live in a city (Arlington, Texas, just outside Dallas and Fort Worth) behind our house is a huge stretch of field that extends for hundreds of feet (both length and breadth-wise). The ideal place for a predator, perhaps.
I'm inclined to think the Coyote was the culprit (and that the mole and the bone issue were part of its actions too), but if you have any other ideas, let me know...
I'd agree with coyote. We have them in my neighborhood, too. I've heard them howling in the nearby fields for years, but have never seen them. My wife and her friend have, however.
ReplyDeleteIt could also be a bobcat as one was photographed recently in Plano pursuing a squirrel on a roof top! A raptor or owl could have carried carrion from a coyote or dog kill as well. With this inside your wood fenced yard, a coyote probably didn't drop it off personally albeigh likely the killer. The mole decapitator could be a domestic cat as they are known to do that to mice. High strangeness indeed friend!
ReplyDeleteGearman:
ReplyDeleteI did wonder about a bobcat, as one of the things I forgot to mention in my post is that - as you know - we have a 6 and a half foot-high wooden fence that surrounds our entire yard.
Could a coyote scale that, and carry a possum body at the same time?
Possible but doubt it feel the need not seeing where their going. Can you delete my duplicate post?
ReplyDeleteTrying to think of opossum head recipes .....
ReplyDelete(an insight)
ReplyDeleteA vulture walks into an airport and he's carrying three stinky putrefying dead skunks. He walks up to the ticket counter, and the lady behind the counter says:
"I'm sorry, we only allow two pieces of carrion."
Mike
ReplyDeleteLOL, good one!
Gearman:
ReplyDeletePossum head soup maybe?
Foxes love decapitating things as well. Set up a game camera! :-)
ReplyDelete