I wrote last year about finding the severed foreleg of a deer sticking out of the soil in my garden. Recently I told you about finding a dead possum with puncture wounds in its neck alongside a heavy pallet that had been pulled out from our outdoor shower. There has been another strange incident.
A couple of days ago I was taking our new puppy for a walk to wear his ass out so he wouldn’t be so hyperactive in the evening, and I came across a freshly dead deer hanging from a wire fence at the edge of my property. One of its hind feet was entangled in the wire and—are you ready for this—there were puncture wounds in its neck.
Our dog shied away from the carcass like it was radioactive. I jumped back, said three Hail Marys which is impressive since I’m not Catholic. I’m not ashamed to admit that if I had holy water, a silver bullet, a crucifix and garlic I’d have tried to do a little magic with them also. Hell, I’d have sung Ave Maria if I knew the words. You can’t be too careful. I never let a calm and rational response get in the way of a scream-like-a-wussy, primal fear-laden, superstitious overreaction.
The obvious question is what happened to the deer? The most obvious answer is that the deer caught its leg in the wire fence, fell and broke its neck and something came up afterward and bit its neck. The deer was young so that’s clearly within the realm of possibility. However, this fence is only four feet high. I’ve seen an adult deer clear a six foot fence from a standing start with room to spare. Even my six foot electric fence is not enough to keep the occasional deer out of my garden. Moreover, the fence has been there ever since we bought the property over 20 years ago. I have to assume that deer know about the fence and jump it regularly. Maybe this deer was particularly klutzy but it makes you think.
Moreover, this is not a barbed wire fence. It’s not like the deer was caught in a gill net or anything. The deer’s hind foot was stuck between two strands of plain wire. There’s no way of really knowing but looked to me like a live deer could have pulled its foot out with a few frantic tugs. It’s almost like (and I’m not prepared to say this happened) someone or something hung the deer from the fence.
It’s possible the deer died because of a broken neck as the result of the fall. Obviously, I didn’t do an autopsy so for all I know this deer could have had a heart attack in mid-jump or suffered one of those bad side effects from medication that they warn you about in drug commercials. You know, the ones that rarely happen but sound horrible if they do like anal leakage or man boobs.
The chances of a deer breaking its neck as the result of falling over a fence seem rather slim to me. I would think that deer are fairly tough. I doubt that they have chicken necks that snap at the slightest trauma. If they did it seems to me that you would have dead deer strewn all over the landscape from running into branches and trees. All I’m saying is that it seems odd to me that a deer would die simply because it fell down after getting its foot caught.
It seems more likely that the deer survived the fall. So then the question becomes how did it die, and I have no clue what the answer is. The puncture wounds in the neck may account for its death. However, even though I’m pretty ignorant of the ways of wildlife, it seems to me that if some animal came along and dispatched the deer by biting it on the neck it would probably be the type of animal that would try to eat the deer. I can understand why such an animal would bite but not eat a possum. Possum probably tastes like bad Korean food. But I would think that deer meat would be high on the food preference chart for any animal with sharp teeth and the cojones to bite a downed deer in the neck.
It’s conceivable that the puncture wounds came from some critter gnawing on the neck after the deer died but that gets us back to questions like what killed the deer and why there was no eating, chewing or flesh tearing involved. While we’re talking about possibilities, another one is that the deer died or the puncture wounds occurred or both things happened before the deer got to the fence. That leads us to the question of what type of animal could kill a deer by biting its neck and then hang it on a fence?
The bottom line is that I’m as clueless about how this happened as John Kerry following a terrorist attack.
One of the reasons I moved here is to be closer to the country and nature. I was thinking more of stuff like butterflies and birds than really weird things like Bigfoots, Chupacabras, Vampires, or bizarre ritualistic animal sacrifice. I hope we didn’t build our cabin on an old Indian graveyard. I saw that movie.
The next problem I faced was what to do with a dead deer hanging from my fence. There is nothing in my mostly suburban background to prepare me for this. I suppose I could have left it hanging from the fence like some form of Neolithic graffiti but that seemed rather macabre so I decided it would be better to take it down. My oldest son, Jake, and I managed to get the deer off the fence, sever its head and drag the body to a distant part of the property for the vultures to dispose of. We put the severed head on top of a red ant hill in hopes of eventually salvaging the skull.
So there you have it—the latest strange occurrence from the Yacavone homestead. Who said that retirement in the country was going to be boring?
It seems more likely that the deer survived the fall. So then the question becomes how did it die, and I have no clue what the answer is. The puncture wounds in the neck may account for its death. However, even though I’m pretty ignorant of the ways of wildlife, it seems to me that if some animal came along and dispatched the deer by biting it on the neck it would probably be the type of animal that would try to eat the deer. I can understand why such an animal would bite but not eat a possum. Possum probably tastes like bad Korean food. But I would think that deer meat would be high on the food preference chart for any animal with sharp teeth and the cojones to bite a downed deer in the neck.
It’s conceivable that the puncture wounds came from some critter gnawing on the neck after the deer died but that gets us back to questions like what killed the deer and why there was no eating, chewing or flesh tearing involved. While we’re talking about possibilities, another one is that the deer died or the puncture wounds occurred or both things happened before the deer got to the fence. That leads us to the question of what type of animal could kill a deer by biting its neck and then hang it on a fence?
The bottom line is that I’m as clueless about how this happened as John Kerry following a terrorist attack.
One of the reasons I moved here is to be closer to the country and nature. I was thinking more of stuff like butterflies and birds than really weird things like Bigfoots, Chupacabras, Vampires, or bizarre ritualistic animal sacrifice. I hope we didn’t build our cabin on an old Indian graveyard. I saw that movie.
The next problem I faced was what to do with a dead deer hanging from my fence. There is nothing in my mostly suburban background to prepare me for this. I suppose I could have left it hanging from the fence like some form of Neolithic graffiti but that seemed rather macabre so I decided it would be better to take it down. My oldest son, Jake, and I managed to get the deer off the fence, sever its head and drag the body to a distant part of the property for the vultures to dispose of. We put the severed head on top of a red ant hill in hopes of eventually salvaging the skull.
So there you have it—the latest strange occurrence from the Yacavone homestead. Who said that retirement in the country was going to be boring?
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