I've not been out on my snowshoes for forever it seems. There has been so much ice lately, I've been relegated to the treadmill for my exercise. But today I got out after a light snowfall yesterday. I was out over three hours, and keeping my eyes open for things to take pictures of. I flushed two owls, found skads of tracks, grouse, fisher, coyote, fox, snowshoe hare. I recently "pecked" tree, demolished by a Pileated Woodpecker. I took photos of the Fisher and Grouse tracks, fearing I wouldn't find anything really interesting. Then not more than about 15o yards up behind my house, I came upon a horrible sight! A freshly killed doe.
Last night on my way home from class, at about 8:30 p.m. three deer crossed the road near my house. I thought it somewhat odd, considering they don't like to travel much through crusty snow. Today it added up. I had noticed so many canid tracks on my way out, many tracks appeared to be of the animal skidding and quickly braking.
So I did the math on the way back when I found the carass. There was plenty of it left, which makes me wonder if dogs were responsible. Tracks of all sizes all around. And blood, like a massacre had taken place. I can only imagine an arterial bleed would cause such a mess. What's worse is I found two fetuses, completely developed and about 5" long. There was a female and a male. The trail of death was evidenced by the very lengthy drag mark from upslope. I found the spot where she fought for her life. She had been chased, and tired through the crusty snow. Finally she fell, and soon after, the arterial blood spatter literally everywhere.
I can only hope that death came swiftly.
I had hoped for an interesting day, I had no idea how interesting it would become.
2 comments:
Oh my goodness, what a bloody mess. How many canine trails did you see around the doe?
Mary-san!
I tried to zoom in on your images and wanted to point out that the prototypical human bitemark is a circular or oval (doughnut) (ring-shaped) patterned injury consisting of two opposing (facing) symmetrical, U-shaped arches separated at their bases by open spaces. Following the periphery of the arches in your pictures are a series of individual abrasions, contusions and/or lacerations reflecting the size, shape, arrangement and distribution of the class characteristics of the contacting surfaces of the human dentition.
Although I can form no reasonable medical certainty from your images, perhaps this wasn’t a canine after-all. There is a concordance of sufficient distinctive, individual characteristics to confer some uniqueness similarities to the population that were once our old clients from KPD days! Well, actually, just kidding!
Domo arrigato! -Hal Brown, Deputy Director Delaware Office of the Chief Medical Examiner and Forensic Sciences laboratory, Wilmington DE (your old Captain at KPD and sparring partner in the dojo).
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