My Personal Crime Scene Investigation

For those of you with sensitive stomachs, you may not want to continue this story to the “continued” section. It involves descriptions and photos of a dead animal. Yes this is morbid, but I felt strongly enough to want to photograph and then publish my findings.

Upon exiting my front door, the horrible image of a dead rodent, eyes partially open and bleeding from the mouth stared back at me. For a moment, I thought it was still alive, just stunned, but I was wrong. Within three minutes on going into the house and ready to leave again, somehow, something severely injured this little animal. Since moving to this home almost exactly two years ago. Our dog left our home this past winter, so these animals have never been so close to the house. I had seen him catch one of these in his mouth and gently bit it, not killing it, but enough to stun it. This also happened on two separate occasions involving possums.

We “released” this rodent as sanitarily as possible, hoping it would do it’s thing and run off, which it did after ten minutes or so when we stopped watching it closely. This little friend unfortunately wasn’t so lucky. All this time, we were calling these things gophers. But, recently while looking for some way to repel them, there was a brief statement about how they are confused with ground squirrels. I did some looking, and yes, we were mistaken. This is a thirteen-striped ground squirrel. I have been noticing the squirrels running around the patio several times, every day.

My untrained speculation leads to some sort of bird clutched this squirrel, and as it flew, it was bleeding. The bird, carrying the extra weight, let go as it could not make the steep incline to get over the top of my two story house. The squirrel just happen to be flung under the overhang, landing just next to my doormat. With the attached photos, perhaps someone else could arrive at a different hypothesis. This sounds like an unlikely explanation, but you never know. It is also possible that it was hit by one of the super-duper duty lawnmowers that cut my lawn. I don't remember seeing one at all, and it definitely didn't go by in the three or so minutes I stepped inside. It is possible that it was already there when I arrived home. A lawn mower could easily fling the squirrel far enough from the yard to front door explaning the trail of blood leading to the body.

Close up of face

Note the trail of blood from the bottom (towards the yard) to the body. The squirrel much have been airborne or carried.