the skeleton in my backyard

We found this the other day under a bush behind our house. Anyone recognize the critter?

[img]http://groups.msn.com/_Secure/0RQAQA!UTAabTytodezhkahzlWNdw*6ZXcsyr!6IoY0RIR6p8F nSI1mWW*f69XrJZ*W1ncb0DHCrt5qS9DVtULw4JyWzzk7wdOQk *TjAsI*g/bones%20001.jpg?dc=4675516320555348690[/img]

[img]http://groups.msn.com/_Secure/0RQAbA!oTHqfTytodezhkah6z5g*FHVW4jXohrwUj3rQxchL6h zWS*x5g2dF70mfNjGzBWvTUsBFBOmn0xfNHyGRJI3a2g525rwz pq9XyYak/bones%20006.jpg?dc=4675516320558009979[/img]

We were thinking maybe a deer.

<font color="#cd6600" size="1">[ March 31, 2005 05:07 PM: Message edited by: sculpey ]</font>

Yep,thats a Deer

It's a young doe. You never noticed the smell?

Quote:

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Originally posted by sculpey:
We found this the other day under a bush behind out house.

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<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Nevermind... [img]graemlins/gulp.gif[/img]

Nope, never noticed the smell. Which I thought was kind of odd cause it's only a couple of hundred feet from the house.

Quote:

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Originally posted by Nostromer:
</font><blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Originally posted by sculpey:
We found this the other day under a bush behind out house.

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<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Nevermind... [img]graemlins/gulp.gif[/img] </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">ooops.. fixed that.

Wow, that got polished off real clean. Anybody know how long it would take for it to decompose like that? Call in CSI.

A few months, give or take a year. The bones are far apart and many of them appear to be missing (legs), which means dogs and other feral critters took care of most of it, and then insects devoured the skin and sinew. From the shots anyway, the good news is either that A) there are no rats or mice to have chewed the bones, or B) that the rats and mice have ample calcium in their diet and didn't need to chew on the bones... [img]tongue.gif[/img]

We get hunters that toss deer carcasses in the field by our house after they've been butchered. I was gonna suggest that but they wouldn't have tossed the head. But that would account for how quickly it decomposed without the smell.

Gee whiz. At least the poachers in PA are courteous enough to dump their carcasses in garbage bags most of the time. They usually only keep the head when it has horns on it, so it's still a possibility. But if the animal was under a bush then most likely she went there to die. I'd say a Nissan Pathfinder did her in.