Wildlife Woes...

If we're friends on Facebook, there's no doubt you're familiar with our tales of wildlife that exist in our very own animal preservation area backyard....in fact, you may have grown weary of the oft repeated groundhog sightings.  But, we've reached a new level in the circle of life that constantly turns...

For those of you that are unaware of our animal adventures, allow me to enlighten you.  We live in a fairly crowded suburb of Pittsburgh.  From our house, we've walked to the McDonald's.  Giant Eagle slash shopping center is not much further than McD's.  The streets are busy and the sounds of sirens are a daily song.  When it's nice enough to have the windows open, one can hear what the neighbors are watching on t.v. (John and Patty are BIG Jeopardy fans!).  My point is, we do not live in the country! 

But you wouldn't know it by our animal population!  Stray cats?  Check!  Deer?  Check!  Four million squirrels?   Check!  Pigeons that the Jeopardy neighbors raise?  Check!  If you listen carefully, you can hear the sweet sounds of Barry White drifting out from under our shed...this is where the ever multiplying ground hogs live.

The other night, we heard what sounded like a deer rubbing it's antlers on a tree.  However, Jay being so wise to deer habits, knew that this was the wrong season for rubbin' so we listened closer.  Turned out to be some type of animal on animal crime.  Cats chasing each other or other critters is not so unusual...but this!  This was different.  Whatever was doing the chasing was fast (so, not a groundhog...they tend to waddle), heavy (so, not a fox) and had a low, guttural growl (so, not a cat or dog).  What then?  Jay posed the question to the Facebook world and immediately responses came back voting that it was a coyote!  COYOTE!!!!????  This could be dangerous!  Should we warn the neighbors?  Maybe send out an FYI note?

WARNING!!!!  THIS PART GETS GROSS!!!

Eh. We didn't do any of those things...but what we did do was smell something awful when we were in the backyard yesterday.  I thought it was garbage.  I was wrong, but man!  I wish I had been right!  Jay discreetly toured the edge of our property looking for the source of the stench.  Sure enough, he found the culprit.  It was a rabbit only identified as such by his little cotton tail and long hind legs.  Peter didn't have much of a head to speak of.  He did, however, have a colony of maggots munching away at where his face would've been.  Sorry for the graphic details...but UGH!  I know I have a lot of weird quirks and things I don't like or that freak me out...but maggots!  I truly have a nightmare inducing fear of maggots.  UGH!  YUCK!  BLECH!

So, what should we do with this discovery?  I voted for leaving it there, letting nature takes it's course, pray that the children didn't see it and forget the whole thing ever happened.  I mean, the smell would eventually dissipate, right?  Jay voted for disposing of the body.  For fear of maggots getting on him or (gasp!) in the house I vehemently opposed this choice!  No way!  Uh-huh!  Leave it be!  Get rid of it how?  Where?  No!

This evening as I was putting the kids to bed, Jay went out to mow the lawn.  After some time had passed with no hum of the mower, Jay came in to say the he had successfully scooped Peter into a heavy duty garbage bag.  Grrrrrrrr!  But now what?  We couldn't leave it in the garbage cans.  Did I mention our raccoon friends earlier?  Plus, with the recent heat, we've just created nature's own Easy Bake Oven.  Hmmmm?  Jay said he would take care of it and left...as in, put the bag in his trunk and drove away.  I'm going with a "don't ask, don't tell" policy on this one.

Now that Jay has changed clothes and thoroughly inspected all contaminated clothing (including the seams) and his trunk for lingering maggots, we're settling in to a quiet evening of listening to the birds chirp and critters run for their lives.