Found in the woods

[[ I seem to be making a habit of writing blog posts "out of order", as it were-- this one I really should have written up months ago, but somehow I never got around to it. These pictures were taken back in early September, when we were visiting my dad's place in Tyringham. ]]

A group of us set off for a family walk in the woods; at a certain point we wound up dividing into one group that wanted to charge ahead and another group that wanted to head back to the house (Lydia and I were the second group). We decided to skip the regular trail and instead bush-whack through the forest. About half the way home we were walking along the top of the north bank of the stream that runs closest to the house, when we saw something white on the ground. At first I thought it must have been mushrooms, but when we got closer it turned out to be the remains of a deer skeleton (at this point just skull, few sections of vertebrae, and a couple of larger hip bones). We decided to bring them back to take a closer look.

 

It was really interesting to look over the bones at close range; there were many surprises. For starters I was surprised at how large the skull was. Normally I think of deer as having fairly small heads, but this one seemed quite sizable. Second thing was the teeth-- I would have expected to see molars or grinding teeth with fairly flat surfaces, whereas the surfaces were very wavy/pointy (perhaps some of the tooth had decayed away?). Another really cool thing was that you could see the little seams / joints where the various pieces of the skull had fit together (as the skull had developed, I suppose). The last surprise was how incredibly picked-clean the skull was: not a scrap of anothing even close to resem,bling meat or skin, even in places on the inside where no larger predator could possibly reach. A fascinating thing to run across.