Stretching ahead was a wide trail of bloody droplets sprayed on drifting snow. I had spent the night in sleep, burrowed deep under my down comforter, rousing only occasionally to a hard gust of wind. I had heard nothing like screams or shots. Little did I suspect the deadly drama not far from my window. Darkness often hides such momentous happenings – But if you listen to the snow, you too may hear and know.
While cooking breakfast, my wife pulled back the curtain from our kitchen window. We were surprised to see a flock of magpies and several ravens among the smaller birds in our back yard. About one hundred yards up the slope sat two bald eagles, one perched on a fence post and the other close by on an object on the ground. Why were they there? Had their winter hunger found a focus?
Turning to my wife, I exclaimed, “I’ve got to see what’s happened!” Quickly putting on my snow boots, hat and warm coat, I stepped out the back door. Like any good sleuth, my camera traveled with me.
Bending to cross a fence, the barbed wire briefly clawed at my coat. I circled up the slope, trying to avoid drifts, walking where snow was shallow. The white headed eagles flapped towards a nearby ridge, while the totally black ravens and magpies in their tuxedos scattered. Would I find the rounded tracks of the cat family or the toe dragging prints of the wild dog family, or perhaps even boot-marks? I knew that wolves were no longer known in this area. As I slogged on through the snow, it became obvious that the wind had obliterated most tracks, totally filling them in.
Bobcat Coyote – center, top to bottom
And then I found it – the wide path of red droplets extending down the snowy slope from the nearby hill. Had an artery been slashed? A bit further on I found a patch of very roughened snow, with large blotches of blood. There had been a struggle. Then the area of sprayed blood continued about one-hundred more feet and stopped in another area of disheveled, reddened snow.
From there a trail of flattened snow streaked with blood extended over towards the fence where I’d first seen the eagles. I felt certain it was a path made by a body being dragged by the culprit. Approaching that area through knee deep snow, I could see the mound. It was the body – of a deer. Blood and fur were scattered about. Hindquarters to thorax were now only bare bones. Front quarters and head were intact. Circling tracks had been buried in blowing snow.
Turning I again slogged up the slope past the area where I first found the trail of spattered blood. Here on the lee side of bushes were the tracks of a running deer. Nearby other widely spaced tracks, rounded and showing no claw marks, became briefly evident until the blown snow again covered them.
The sliding tracks of the perpetrator and a rabbit.
My dear Dr. Holmes, what is your verdict? What has the snow said to you?