The Urban Pantheist

As we walked the high tide line in Wellfleet, we couldn't help notice the large number of dead horseshoe crabs. At first I assumed some had to be molted shells of growing animals. But no, every crab I encountered was a full carcass.
( more deads )

This mysterious and perhaps a little creepy stone cabin welcomes you to the south entrance of Cutler Park. The northern end is far more developed and well traveled, and I have never been there.

( come along for a lot of pictures )

When we got back from a dogwalk around the block the other evening, Maggie had a strong desire to go into the bushes along the fence line. It turns out she was smelling this dead raccoon. The next morning I went out to remove it. It was missing most of its tail but had no other obvious sign of injury. It probably got hit by a car over at the busy road and dragged itself back to a quiet secluded place where it died from internal injuries.

Wilson Mountain Reservation is a protected patch of woods on a stony hill in Dedham. The main entrance has a parking area which is almost always packed with cars full of dog owners taking their pets for a quick ramble up the path, often off-leash. My good friend dedhamoutdoors knows her town well, and took me to the back side of the Reservation, where we didn't see another human or canine soul. Perhaps the persistent light rain helped.

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On Sunday morning I led an Urban Nature Walk to Malibu Beach in Dorchester!
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Eastern milk snake Lampropeltis triangulum triangulum

It seems calculated to infuriate me, that on the day before a holiday about a mythical purging of snakes (a symbol for the forced conversion of pagans to Christianity), I should find a dead snake in my yard, killed by a predator that couldn't be bothered to eat it. Eastern milk snakes are purportedly quite common in our area, and yet I've personally only encountered one live one, and this dead one. I took care of a couple captive specimens at Drumlin Farm, fairly calm educational animals that eventually died of gout.

Eastern milk snakes are constrictor snakes that prey on mice and other small animals, including other snakes. Sometimes their orange and brown pattern causes the over-cautious to mistake them for copperheads--a venomous species (which enjoys protected status, so don't go chopping them up with your shovel you big bully). Milk snakes are so-called because they were frequently noticed in dairy barns. Hopefully no one actually believed the ludicrous idea they were feeding on milk, since it should be clear that they were feeding on mice in the barns.

I went for a perfectly pleasant walk in the Dedham Town Forest today, but I got home and looked at my pictures and some of them are pretty off-putting. This first one is just an old sign indicating part of the "fitness trail," but it feels very foreboding to me. Be warned, this series includes at least one very unpleasant photograph.

( dare you go further? )

A young red-tail with squirrel prey. The bird is reacting to my close approach with ruffled feathers. (It was recommended that we move the bird along so that it would continue to thin out our overpopulation of gray squirrels.)

Decomposed squirrel carcass amid the Pennsylvania smartweed.