Warning! Warning! This post includes photos that may be disturbing to some, mainly dead animals or parts of them.

Although KW does not kill or harm animals, she has seen many dead animals or animal parts wash up on the beach in her life & they do not *usually* bother her. Despite the title, these photos are not particularly gory or bloody. But just saying…

Dead animals have been known to create quite a stir here at the moominbeach, such as once when a huge sturgeon washed up down by Our Northern Correspondent’s stretch of beach. It was the talk of the octogenarians on the beach for days. Not sure why somebody didn’t just grab a shovel and bury it but that’s kind of the way things roll around here. More fun to watch something slowly decay and talk about it forever.

But back to today. First, we went up and hiked the nature trail on the old Read property. We were walking on an old beaver pond when we spied this loverly pile of fur. No bones. What was it?

Well, a bit further on, there was this deer leg, or part thereof. (We’ll get to the bloody Kleenex in a minute. It has nothing to do with the deer leg.) So who dunnit? I’m thinking not a human. Wolf? Bear? The answer is probably more prosaic. The deer probably starved to death and was eaten by rodents and carrion birds. Who knows why the leg was nowhere near the fur.

All right, dun dun dun, the Bloody Kleenex! That was for yer fav-o-rite blahgger, who came out on the bottom in a little scuffle with a stick during a bit of bush-whacking necessitated by a beaver pond that was flooding the trail. Just a little scrape but several pinpoint-sized wounds kept sending loverly little streams of blood kept running down KW’s leg. Annoyed? Why yes! Note to self: snag some of The Commander’s lifetime bandaid supply for your backpack!

Next up? Tick count! I think that little expotition snagged no fewer than eight unwanted travelers. I saw the GG putting a ziplock bag of ticks into the freezer and I asked him why the heck he didn’t just throw the plastic bag in the trash. Well. The answer is that the GG puts them in ziplock bags and freezes them until he can add them to his “collection” in the Lyme Lounge. A tick collection…

Finally, the GG took up temporary residence right smack in the middle of the path to the beach such that if I wanted to get to the beach, I had to walk to the side of his chair. And that meant that I had to navigate around all of his stuff… Bird book, Know Your Ships Book, various dirty napkins, a glass and a little can of Raz-ber-Rita (google it), bird head and wing. WAIT!!! BIRD HEAD AND WING? WHAT? Yes, this Caspian tern (or parts of it) was out at buoy 23 last night and today the GG kayaked out there to retrieve it.

Who dunnit? Probably a bigger bird, a raptor of some sort. I dunno where it is now. It is NOT in the freezer. The Commander’s older brother was a naturalist and she remembered him putting owls and things in the family refrigerator. I do not see a Caspian tern in the refrigerator.

This isn’t probably the most politically correct blahg post ever but it documents a slice of life here in the woods on the shores of Gitchee Gumee.

G’night,
KW

This entry was posted on Monday, May 26th, 2014 at 5:59 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.