When an
animal dies, the first question is always how?
Our clue
about the presence of the body was the dog, who was behaving strangely. She wasn’t coming when called and was
spending a great deal of time in a certain part of the woods where she doesn’t
usually go. I got the binoculars on her
and realised she was chewing on something large. She growled at us and wouldn’t allow us to
retrieve her find. I managed to get hold
of her and remove the item, which proved to be part of the hind leg of a roe
deer – still fresh and furred, not yet stinking, with the delicate black hoof
still intact. I took it and a section of
thigh bone down to the river and threw it in.
The next
morning, my mother shadowed the dog to find the rest of the deer, lying in a
quiet grove under Scots pines. When I
arrived, crows and jays flapped away from the scene. The carcass had been thoroughly scavenged,
probably mainly by badgers, with very little flesh remaining. I had arrived too late to glean any clues
about the cause of death. It certainly
wouldn’t have been the Jack Russell.
That question: “how?” remained
hanging.
The
rounded pugmarks in the snow, the deer carcass three years ago, completely
stripped of flesh before it had the chance to go off, the depression in the
moss on a boulder where a large mammal had been resting, the rabbit fur on the
tree trunk, the scat in the tree – all of this is fascinating but ultimately inconclusive. Meanwhile I read about potential lynx
reintroductions; as well as direct persecution, one of the factors that is thought
to have contributed to the extinction of lynx is the lack of deer prey in the
middle ages. No such problem now.
A large
mat of skin (licked clean, fur still attached) lay alongside the body of the
deer. Several ribs, the lower jaw and
two legs were missing. The head, dark
eye still glistening like frogspawn, was still attached firmly to the
spine. Clumps of surprisingly grey, long
winter fur lay amongst the cold leaf litter and brambles. The dog was gnawing something behind a
boulder.
In three
trips I dumped the remains into the river, the only place I could think of
where the dog wouldn’t keep coming back for more. The section of hide smacked flatly on the surface,
floating and drifting downstream. The
two legs and head-with-spine sank immediately.
It was a strange thing to have to do, and I did it without any ceremony.
There was
then a bitter spell in which the river all but froze over. Snowstorms came; their cargo melted. Heavy rain followed, the river rising
frequently. I assumed that the bones of
the deer would be swept far away, or perhaps I would find them lodged against
the granite stepping stones just downstream.
One day at
the end of March, when the weather had calmed and the river dropped, I found that
this was not the case. The curved spine,
still attached to the head, had come to rest in a slow stretch of water on the
inside of a bend, against a large stone on the river bed. The remnants of the skeleton looked
sculptural, placed. It formed a reversed
question mark against the yellow sand of the riverbed, with the skull as the
period. The vertebrae were tasselled
with riverweed and dead grass. Minnows
darted in its lee and nipped in to feed on the remaining scraps of flesh. Small silent white islands of froth slid on
the surface above.
I’ve been
seeing up to four roe deer every day.
They’re becoming more and more casual, ambling away rather than bouncing
with white scuts flying, or even standing and watching me. In the recent snow, one walked past our front
door. The buck has now lost his velvet,
and now the prongs of his horns stand bare against the sky, tinged pinkish with
blood, forming a counterpoint to the stems of dead bracken at his feet. The fur rippling over his shoulders resembles
thick brown moss. He squeezes under the
gate and gives a guttural disyllabic bark of alarm. My presence is still enough to scare them –
good. Perhaps they will retain the sense
to save themselves if need be.
Splitting
logs in the barn, I startled his companions, trapped in the vegetable
garden. One cleared the fence intended
to exclude them; the other got a front leg caught in the wire and dangled
painfully, writhing. I set down the axe
and approached, speaking softly, preparing to lift her, relieve the weight and
set her free. Just as I spread my arms
to gather her up, she thrashed wildly and broke free, hurling herself vainly against
the fence and then dashing past me. She
found a clumsy, crashing way over the bottom fence and then limped across the
field, looking back at me.
If I had
not been there, enacting a primal scene with my axe, she would not have got
caught. But she may have tangled herself
anyway on trying to leave, and then hung there painfully: a slow and ghastly
death. Now she may shake off her limp,
or it may prove the end of her.
I stand at
the riverbank most days. As the remains
of the dead deer are washed by the water, and the minnows polish it whiter, the
living ones grow bolder, oblivious to the fate of their sister, more and more
habituated to harmless humans, heedless that some sort of death is waiting for
them, too.
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