dead bodies in the garden

Forensic pathologists conduct autopsies to determine the cause of death. I'm no forensic pathologist. I'm also not a zoologist. So before I can speculate about the cause of death, I need to work out what animal these were, when they were warm blooded living mammals. This post may seem horrible and grisly, but in the bid to attract wildlife to the garden, there are bound to be dead, as well as alive, bodies ... it's the cycle of life.

The skeleton in the photos above is of a ring tailed possum. The reason I can confidently identify it as such is because I remember seeing it soon after it died. How and why it died is a mystery. I have since learned that if you find a dead possum or other marsupial, you should immediately check its pouch to make sure there is not a baby there.

After that, there are a number of options regarding disposal of the carcass, like putting it in a rubbish bin or burying it. I just leave them where they are and let birds and beetles and flies and other insects get nourishment and strip the carcass down to the bones. This is what happened and the possum skeleton remains in the same position that it died in, with the backbone and tail bones no longer connected but hardly disturbed and still in position.

When I first noticed the tail hanging out of the possum box, I was thrilled to have such a cute photo opportunity. I wondered whether the possum had a hot tail and was cooling it while it slept.

When the tail remained in the same position after a few days, I started to be concerned. To make sure my suspicions were correct I went out with a torch at night to check on it. It was still there. The possum must be dead, I assumed, although I haven't climbed up to check. How and why it died is unknown.

possum entrails

headless possum

The possum on the footpath had been viciously attacked. Something had ripped its head off and its entrails had been ripped out as well. The fact that it hadn't been eaten implied the killer killed for the sake of killing, not for food. I assume that would have been a fox or maybe a cat.

When I found another dead carcass in the garden, I first thought it was a possum. Only when I looked more closely at the tail did I realize it wasn't a brushtail or ringtail possum tail. Nor was it a rat's tail. What could it  be? Maybe a dog or a cat, or maybe a rare black fox? Black foxes are part of Australia's introduced fauna and there have been occasional reported sightings since the 1920s. They are a darker variant of the silver fox. Whatever it was, I wonder how it came to die in the garden.

mystery tail