Deer Remains Found In Thawing Wetlands - GRAPHIC

 Today I was walking along the snowy banks of the Sudbury River. The snow is turning into mud, slush, and ice as rain and spring-like weather have been occurring recently. There is a peninsula that I have been looking at from the bridge and viewing on google maps. For about a month though, I haven't had the motivation to hack my way through the tangles of spiny greenbrier vines and find a way through the chain-link fence. Today, I finally forced myself to work my way out. It turns out that the greenbrier wasn't as bad as it looked from the bridge, instead, my main obstacle was fallen trees. I'm not sure why, but I kept having to duck and climb over fallen maple trees. This was probably due to the beaver damage, typical of our New England wetlands, and the lack of maintenance. The place isn't exactly a park. There are no paths and not one human footprint in the ice. I realized that the peninsula was also a lot more of a swamp than a forest. The trees I saw from a distance and associated with land, were in reality only growing out of small patches of moss protruding from the water. That is why I never actually went to the peninsula. I instead wandered along the snowy strip of land until I reached a part of the river I had never seen before which led to an underpass below the Masspike. After standing there for a minute, squinting into the water, wondering if fish were active yet, (I didn't end up seeing anything but dried leaves and muck.), I turned back, to explore an area that was infested with phragmites and cattails. I immediately noticed some dog-like tracks in the snow-covered ice, leading into some bushes. I followed them with my eyes, which stopped suddenly when I saw what they led to, only about 10 feet from me:

 

     

...The heavily gnawed on skull and six vertebrae of a female whitetail deer. I immediately knew what it was because I have a deer skull on a table in my room, and I recognized all the features characteristic of a deer skull. Some of the skull was bright red, which I realized was flesh, still wedged onto the bone, combined with the stain of blood against the white bone. It is still apparently to cold for invertibrates like dermestid beetles and blowfly larvae to do their jobs. The snout and left jaw of the doe has been chewed off, almost definately the work of Eastern Coyotes. I can't figure out whether it was a victim of the coyotes, or whether starvation and winter conditions killed it. No matter how it died, it was clearly swarmed by coyotes afterward, proven by the mess of the same dog-like tracks surrounding the skull, and the fact that the rest of the carcass had clearly been dragged off. Those coyotes needed every last crunch of fat to survive...

 

I carried the thing home (in a plastic bag stuffed deep in my backpack, to save me from shocked looks of passing cars.) I had a choice to make:

OPTION 1: clean the skull right away, and apply rubbing alcohol, so I can add it my bone collection right away. I already have a deer skull and spinal segment, but more would be cool.

OPTION 2: keep it for the night, and then return it to the forest, setting up a cam to capture whatever wildlife returns to scavenge the remains. Whatever is left over after a few days is what I will keep (if anything at all)

(I picked option 2 in the morning so stay tuned)

...And i'll end the post with a less disturbing photo I took near the skull, of the satisfying thing that happens when you snap a cattail catkin in half on a windy day. It makes a cool explosion thingy...