When I first bought the cottage in 2001, I walked around the garden, checked out the backyard, and other things I didn't pay much attention to when I was looking. So I didn't notice this thing beside the shed until I moved in.
It was an antler. Not from any beast around here. I'm thinking it's an elk. There was another one in the front of the cottage. I guess the previous owner was a big game hunter from the north?
Something always confused me about these antlers. You see the whiteness in some areas? Ya, I didn't figure it out for a while either. Until I heard something like a grind grind grinding once when I was sitting on my deck. It was the kind of sound that if you heard it in the middle of the night, you'd be expecting a guy in a hockey mask to burst through the door...
Anyway it was in the day. So phew.
When I checked it out, it all made sense...
grind grind grind...
Yep. That's a squirrel grinding its teeth on the antler. Nature is so cool. It serves two purposes for the squirrel...it gives them a good, natural, healthy dose of calcium; and it also wears down their teeth that grow and grow and grow (not quite like a beaver's, but you get the gist.)
Also, it helps to get rid of nature's detritus, a dead animal in the woods becomes one with the world again. (Too new-age-y? Sorry.)
Holy grinding, Batman!
Ground down...
This kind of stuff happens all over. Like it's sad to have trees that are dying, but don't cut them down. There's likely a family of woodpeckers living in it. And in the fall, why rake the leaves out of your garden then put mulch in it in the spring? When you live close to nature, you realize it looks after itself just fine. We're the ones out of place. So I try to just observe it all...