Found Bones - Part 1

I live way out in the country of Florida. There are so many different kinds of wild creatures to be seen in my yard alone. Deer, boar, turkey, rabbits, opossum, armadillo, snakes, frogs, mice, raccoons, owls, woodpeckers, lizards, skinks and on and on.


Juvenile Grey Rat Snake.


Wild Turkey chick saved from my cat and returned to mother.


Playing tag with a young Nine-banded Armadillo.

Much of the bones in my collection have been found over the years. But once I acquired part feral dogs, they seemed to just appear in my yard. I consider them gifts from my dogs. :)

I find bones fairly regularly in my yard because my dogs, Falcor and Artax, find the remains that hunters throw in the woods... or roadkill.

While I moved out here to be one with nature, much of the original residents here enjoy killing the animals I love to catch a glimpse of. I really don't like hunting but I have also come to realize that a lot of the people that live out in rural areas like this feed their families this way. I imagine there are even more people hunting now with the economy so bad.

From time to time the dogs drag a skull of a wild boar into the yard or I just find remains of the teeth or part of a jaw. This is the largest remains of a boar skull I've found yet. Looks like it has been in the woods for a long time. Wish I knew where my dogs were finding these!



Below is a found Wild Boar jaw that I wedged in between tree limbs. If you look carefully you can see where animals have been gnawing on it for calcium. I have deer antlers outside that they have nearly completely chewed up. This jaw has been here for so long now that the tree is actually growing into it. Amazing.



I'm hoping that my dogs didn't kill the dog this skull is from. They had been chewing on it in the yard and broke it. I plan on attempting to glue it back together.



One day I found this huge spine and ribcage in my back yard. It is either from a wild boar or deer.



But Falcor wasn't letting me near it for long.



By the next day all that remained was part of the spine. So I tossed it somewhere the dogs couldn't get to and it is cleaning up real nice all by itself.



Stay tuned for more in this series of found bones to come.

Never Steal a Dog's Food

I hosed fur, blood & feces off the sidewalk this morning. Why?

At around 3AM I heard playful barking coming from outside. The dogs bark now and then during the night so I didn't pay much attention.

Then something triggered in my head. It was the way the dogs were barking, and I realized that they "had something". I'd heard this bark before when they had a mole (which I did manage to somehow save).

I ran outside and the dogs fled when I did. They knew they were doing something I was not going to like.

This is what I found at the foot of my steps:



A really big Mr. Opossum, which looked pretty dead. I stood there watching for breathing, movement, anything. Nothing. I really didn't want the dogs to grab him again and make a big bloody mess all over the place.

It was odd because I hadn't so much as seen an opossum for a long time because of the dogs. But this guy had somehow wandered into my yard and found the dog food.

Yup, that's where the trail of drool and fur started. They must have caught him in the act and nabbed the poor guy in his behind. Long ago I'd find opossum and raccoon heading up a tree with the dogs barking underneath.

I stood between the opossum and the dogs trying to figure out what to do. No way I was touching that bloody ball of wet fur with razor teeth! And I didn't want to hurt him any more in case he was still alive.

Falcor was creeping up alongside a tree half laying keeping his "eyes on the prize", while Artax tried to use his eyes to hypnotism me away from the area. No luck.



Then I saw Mr. Opossum's nostrils begin to flare and his chest rise and fall rapidly. Guess he was probably in shock and coming out of it. Whew, good news!

I walked the dogs away from the area and tried to distract them from his escape. Another few minutes passed and I saw him get to his feet and sneak back to the woods. So I ran the dogs out to the road. They LOVE chasing after me and really can't resist!

So glad the opossum was just injured and playing dead. Really hope he made it into the deep-woods and didn't go under my house to die. Don't want to deal with that stench, again.

The next day I saw a vulture circling the property. Though they do make their daily rounds, it had me nervous. This one was flying really low.


Sue climbing freshly fallen trees near an animal den.

So I headed out into the woods to see if there was any sign of vultures feeding. No vultures, no opossum...good. Found an animal den near the base of a HUGE tree that must have fallen during a tornado watch in the area the night before. Could be what stirred up poor Mr. Opossum. Really hope I don't find him back in the yard in pieces later on.

A happy ending, so far.