First there was the jawbone. I went to check the cameras at Ringtail Rocks (more coming from them —
you saw the sexy skunks, right?) and there on my usual route was this mandible. The size and shape said "fox" to me, and the Internet tells me that is probably from a red fox, not a gray fox. Both live on that the ridge.
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| "Digested" grass. |
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At another time, I was coming down with The Dawg, not taking our usual path, when I saw this large clump of partially digested-looking grasses (compare to pine cones). My first thought was "stomach contents of a deer or elk," but there were major problems with that.
No one has been hunting up there during bow season. Second, if there had been any carcass or gut pile, said Dawg would have smelled it and run like an arrow straight to it, because there is nothing he loves more than Dead Things. That close to our usual path, I would have smelled it too.
So where did these tightly clumped grasses come from? They had a look of nesting material too. Had someone — perhaps someone of the ursine persuasion — dug out a wood rat's nest? I looked around but did not see any such disturbance.
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Sorry about the backlighting, but the sun was not yet
over the ridge to the east (behind me). |
Aha. The grass was part of a disintegrating squirrel nest, probably Abert squirrels, since they are all over these pine woods.
Here's a great read on the relationship between squirrels, fungus, and trees.
The only difference is that 98 percent of our Abert squirrels are the black (melanistic) color phase, not the two-tone variety seen in Arizona and New Mexico.
1 comment:
I once found a beaver skull, and tossed it on the floor of the back seat of my car. I then forgot about it. I traded in the car some time later, the skull having slid under the front seat. I only remembered it after getting rid of the car. I always wondered what the dealership people or the person who wound up buying the car thought when they found it.
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