Off to the east of Landlady’s place, if you follow the wash upstream, you come to a branch that splits into two long canyons. The smaller one that goes to the north can be kind of an eerie place, and never more than now.
A few hundred yards up the canyon there’s a sort of kettle that fills with deep water whenever it rains. You’ve got to clamber over some rocks to get past that. Then a little farther up there’s a big natural stand of grape vines. Usually it’s a rather pleasant spot.
Not so much right now, though. Your first clue that not all is well will be the clouds of flies. And the stench.
But here’s something I’ve never actually seen in all my walking around here: A complete skeleton. You’ll see bones, to be sure. Sometimes a field of bones, if the dearly departed was something big, like a cow. But never a complete skeleton. This pic doesn’t show it very clearly (and I definitely wasn’t going to rearrange the corpse just to take a picture) but the skull and forelegs are there, just facing away from the camera. The insects still have some work to do.
Maybe coyotes practice professional courtesy? It’s a rather small one, I doubt it was fully mature. I wonder if it was killed in the flood?
