Mating Season Mystery

It was a red fox's tail. Just the tail. In the road.

I know December is fox mating season, so its attacker might have been another fox. They defend their territories, but aren't known to kill or maim each other. Chasing the intruder from the territory is enough.

Foxes have few wild predators: bobcats, bears, golden eagles. Foxes can outrun dogs, as every British hunting party knows. People do say bobcats live here, but I haven't seen proof. Human fox killers, who don't eat them, always want the tail as a trophy. They wouldn't remove it and leave it. Looked around for traces of a car killing. None. So it's a tail without a story.

The dime in the photo lets you see its length -- about 11 inches. That's short for a fox tail so it might have been a young one that got into trouble because it didn't know better. Maybe it sacrificed its tail.

A fox uses its tail for warmth (curling it around and burying its nose in it to sleep) and for balance and to communicate (the way a dog's tail does). Somewhere a red fox around here is minus its tail. It must hurt a lot.

Wounded

Walking on steep Timberstone Trail I saw a yellow item in the road. It was a turtle, about six inches long, on its back, squirming but unable to turn over. As I approached it pulled itself inward, scared. I saw the wound to its plastron. I turned it over. Scarlet blood flowed from a deep crack in its shell; it had been run over but not killed. I took a photo too sickening to show you, and deleted it. I lifted the turtle from the asphalt and placed it among some roadside plants. Thought it might prefer to die there instead of in the hot August road. Hope I didn't hurt it worse. Felt very bad that there wasn't any hope for its survival.

This is not the usual Three-Toed Box Turtle one sees around here; this turtle unquestionably has four toes. It does not have the brown streaks on its plastron which would firmly identify it as an Ornate Box Turtle, Terrapene ornata ornata, but in Missouri it must be either one or the other, and it is probably an Ornate. Its normal lifespan is 32 to 37 years. Every summer I see a couple of dozen turtle bodies, all sizes, littering the roads.On our narrow, steep, curving or shoulderless roads it is not always possible to swerve to avoid them. I would grieve except that I know there are many more turtles who survive in this area, where there is abundant conservation land. Whoever is responsible for that, I thank fervently.

Deer in the Ditch

On a walk along the edge of my own property, about 4:00 p.m. yesterday, I found a doe in a roadside ditch, eyes closed but still breathing. She didn't look all that torn up but I was so shocked I didn't do a full inspection. After sunset, the coyotes would come whether she was dead or not. I raised my eyes and saw bits of car parts in the road.

My options: Ignore it; try to put her out of her misery with my .22 long rifle (the biggest gun I have); or get someone braver to do it. I thought all sorts of things: "Let nature (!) take its course." "I can't shoot it, it'd be too horrible, I'd never forgive myself." "Should I shoot it in the head or heart? What if I did it wrong?" "For this I need a bigger gun." "Maybe she's just stunned and will get up and walk away." "Am I obliged to do this?" "Whom should I call?"

I did nothing. About 7:30 p.m. just as total darkness fell I heard one terrific shotgun blast from that part of the road. Haven't been back there to look.

Everybody Sing:

Poor thing. Luckily I see this sight here only about once a year, in spring. Last time I met a live skunk -- the animal kind -- was 20 years ago in upstate New York.

Don't Make Me Kill Your Dog

Saw a dead calico housecat, run over, at the highway's edge. It hadn't been dead long. Its plumpness told me it'd been somebody's pet. Oh, when they find out; how terrible. Unless they are like some people and think the country is a place to dump their pets.

I'm seeing cats scattering into the field when I pull up into my road at night. They kill and eat mice but also bunnies and whippoorwills. Dogs chase everything. Six or seven times I've blasted the car horn at dogs trotting on Hwy F. They thought I was playin'. I fear that one day out walking or working I'll meet a pit bull the owner dumped because it was too expensive or loco to keep. When I see a dog barreling toward me I no longer assume it's a neighbor and friendly. I pick up a rock. Don't make me do that.

Let your pet out in the country and it won't be adopted. It won't become a barn cat, or go native and care for itself. It's used to your sofa. It'll get killed. Have mercy; please take it to a shelter. Better the needle than what I saw today with a crushed head and liver hanging out.

Armadillos This Far North

Armadillos are tropical mammals (that's right, mammals!), but they've been in southern Missouri for several years, working their way up Interstate 44. Three years ago I saw an armadillo on Highway FF. Told the feed-store owner's son, and he said he'd seen one in the area also, but nobody had believed him. Finally, today, one turns up as road kill right where Highway FF meets F. I apologize for such a sad photo. It's just proof that armadillos do come right up to the northern edge of their range when they want something. (This is latitude 38 degrees 25 minutes North.) This one might well have been drinking from the creek. They need a lot of water. My 1946 Webster's unabridged dictionary states flatly, "Their flesh is good food."

To protect themselves, armadillos will roll up into an ball. But when startled by oncoming cars, they jump -- vertically -- which is almost always fatal. This one had a laceration along its back and down the side. Close-up, it's an almost Martian creature: blend of pig, tank and turtle, with an opossum's face and a rat's tail. But unfortunately, it's very slow.

The Ungrateful Turtle

Route 66 State Park -- formerly a toxic dump once known as Times Beach, Missouri -- isn't far from here. The EPA incinerated the toxins, fixed it all up with bike and horse paths, and I figure it isn't any more toxic than anything else, so I went walking there this fine June morning. Several people were on the same road, jogging, biking, rollerblading.

A common sight in spring and summer here is turtles crossing the roads and highways. People (and me too) often stop to pick 'em up and put 'em in the roadside so they won't be killed. A few drivers like to run turtles over to hear 'em pop. That type will roast for eternity. But this lean white-haired bicyclist wearing a bike suit stopped and laid down his bike when he saw the big turtle in the road, just about the time I saw it.

The turtle was black and the size of a dinner plate. It immediately pulled in its head and legs as the kind man approached. Using both hands, he picked up the turtle -- and darned if it didn't shoot out two quarts of pee in a stream thick as a racehorse's, all over the poor Good Samaritan.

A mother and daughter out walking saw this too, and we all had a good laugh at the old guy's expense.

Moral: When you pick up a turtle, make sure it is facing you.

What Did I Run Over?

Doing 55 mph On Hwy 109 late on Thursday night, something shadowy entered my headlights. Definitely a quadruped, but not a deer; it looked like a cat, but a strangely large one -- was it a fox? A young fox? They're almost never run over. . . It panicked, and began to flee to the right, and I braked, but too late. Whatever it was went "whump" against the bumper on the passenger side.

Shocked, I realized that it was too late and dark, and the road too narrow, for me to back up and see what it was and if I had killed it, or if I could somehow save it, maybe getting it out of harm's way. The next day I checked the bumper for blood or damage. It was normal. I looked for bloodstains on 109 but couldn't remember the accident's exact location, and anyway did not see any -- and there was no road kill.

Maybe it lived.