Squirrel On The Half Smell

WARNING: DECAY AND DEATH IN THIS POST.

This is a story about the pretty beetles below. It does contain pics of a really, really dead squirrel, so be warned, delicate types.



A handfull of carrion beetles and a youngster.



Even if you make your living inside rotting carcasses, it's important to remember your daily grooming. This beetle carefully cleaned it's parts before returning to work.




This is how the squirrel first appeared. Notice the mound of dirt over and around it. That is the work of the carrion beetle.



This mound of fresh sand was being pushed up by the beetle below as I watched. The belly of the squirrel is just visible in the right upper corner of the picture.



When I took my dive knife and gently scraped off the top of the mound, the beetle tunnel appeared. See the dark hole?



The tale ...
On the way out to feed the chickens, I looked down and found this dead squirrel, half buried in the sand. A host of flies were using him as a landing strip and the ubiquitous fire ants were patrolling around his perimeter.


My first thought was, " I hope you choked on one of my scuppernong grapes you fuzzy-tailed tree rat!" Sorry squirrel lovers, but I have a huge population of them and they pretty much prevent me from growing corn and this year, they wiped out my grape crop.

Yes, I know they are an edible game animal.


No, I don't eat them. Ugh. As a boy, I visited with the fanatical squirrel hunting family across the street and watched as they cracked the skulls between their teeth to eat the brains. That pretty much did it for me.

My second thought was, "Hmmmmm, this has blog potential ... for reasons unseen, yet obvious."

It's actually pretty odd to find a dead squirrel around here. I think they usually die as prey and get carried off or consumed. There is another reason why any small dead animal is easy to miss though ... they get buried quick by the carrion beetle clan.


If you're a carrion beetle, the sweet scent of decay draws you like a magnet. Once a carrion beetle locates a carcass, they begin to excavate beneath it, while piling the excavated dirt over the carcass. In no time the carcass has sunk beneath the surface where competition from other predators is less. Eggs are laid, and the beetle larvae consume the carcass in the safety of their dark, oozey lair.



It's all pretty blechhhh and icky, but still amazing in a putrescent sort of way. Thingfish23 can probably relate. I got a little forensicy myself and had to mess with the burial in process ...

I lifted the squirrel out of the dirt with my knife and set the body aside. Then I carefully spaded the ground where the squirrel had lain and sifted it through a wire screen. After the sand had fallen through the wire mesh, a handfull of brightly colored carrion beetles were left behind.

They posed for a few pics and then I laid the squirrel atop the mound of fluffy sifted sand. I released the beetles nearby and they immediately burrowed beneath the carcass. My plan was to come back in a while and photograph the changes in the carcass.





The squirrel atop it's fresh bed of sand. Note that it is completely above the ground. This was about 1:00 pm today.



To insure that only the bugs would mess with the carcass, I laid this cage over it. My dogs hate to miss a good carcass roll and I was afraid they might dive in if I did not put up a barrier of some kind.
I set a piece of plywood atop it to keep the rain off ... just in case the distant rumbling turned into a good downpour.

I'll update later today with pics of any changes that occur due to the burial bugs.
Stay tuned.

UPDATED AT 9:00 PM


THE PICTURE ABOVE SHOWS THE SQUIRREL A LITTLE BEFORE 4:00 PM TODAY. HE'S BEGINNING TO SINK AS THE BEETLES EXCAVATE BELOW AND PILE SAND AROUND HIS PERIMETER.


THE LAST PICTURE TAKEN TODAY AT AROUND 5:00 PM. MOST OF THE SQUIRREL HAS BEEN BURIED AND THE BEETLES WERE STILL HARD AT WORK.



A CARRION BEETLE BRIEFLY EMERGES TO SHOVE SAND OUT OF IT'S TUNNEL.