Car­di­nal feathers

We’ve lived in our new house for about four months now. In that time, my wife (bless her) has col­lected and dis­posed of two dead squir­rels, a fully grown but dead rab­bit, and a mori­bund car­di­nal. We do have dogs, but nei­ther of them are com­pe­tent enough to have caught any of the above.

Which leaves either a neigh­bor­hood killer (cat, moun­tain lion, hexa­va­lent chromium?), or the mys­ti­cal: our new back­yard is the neighborhood’s ele­phant grave­yard, where dying ani­mals go to leave their bones. Or in our case, carcasses.

Per­haps this is not an unusual num­ber of dead things? But in our pre­vi­ous four­teen years of home own­er­ship I can think of… well, one poi­soned rat, one thread­bare squir­rel, and two ani­mals I killed with a lawn­mower (a wee baby bunny and a garter snake). So, that’s four in four­teen years, ver­sus four in four months.

Methinks some­thing is up.