Every so often someone will come to WildCare and request our help in identifying a large spider they have in a box or to ask how they can keep raccoons from eating the koi in their pond. Fairly standard questions. But this weekend I had the most surreal conversation with a woman who wanted my very professional opinion. The County Civic Center has a lagoon on its property and is home to a very large number of domestic, wild, and hybrid ducks and geese. Said lagoon is a toxic cesspool; every bird we get at WildCare from that location gets designated as Typhoid Mary as it carries every possible intestinal parasite known to show up on a microscope slide. The birds that live on the lagoon also have terrible nutritional problems, including metabolic bone disease, since their “diet” is comprised almost solely of the bread the good people of Marin feed them every day. If bird flu is going to show up in Marin, I frankly wouldn’t be surprised if the lagoon was the place. Frankly, the flock could use a little culling.
Well, apparently there has been a rash of killings at the lagoon. Possibly a coyote has found the smorgasbord of foie gras in the urban center. Possibly a misbehaving dog, with or without its miscreant owner, has been ravaging the pond. A few Sundays ago I took a call from a woman who, after reading an article in the Marin Independent Journal, thought the culprit was a river otter that had found its way into the lagoon. She wanted me to tell her everything I knew about the way otters would hunt these ducks and geese because she wanted to stake out the lagoon looking for the criminal mastermind and wanted to know what to look for.
Perhaps this is the time to mention that among the many interesting people who live in Marin, there is a group of ladies who are VERY attached to the birds at the Civic Center. Most of these birds that end up at WildCare are brought to us by one of these women. (We also have a “crazy pigeon lady” who searches for injured pigeons and brings in a good 80% of the pigeons we get every weekend, but that’s a story for another day.)
At any rate, I didn’t know much about the hunting behavior of otters and I implied that I wouldn’t tell her anyway if it was her intent to stop the otter from catching its dinner. Apparently, one of the ducks had made its way to WildCare for a necropsy in which a volunteer vet had determined that the injuries were of the canine variety anyway.
Fast forward to this Sunday. There I am standing at the front desk, minding my own business, when I see a woman hovering in the doorway holding a plastic bread bag. “Can I help you with something?” I ask. Slowly she moves closer and timidly she says, “Yes, I found this at the Civic Center.” Here I am thinking perhaps she has an injured animal in the bag and I need to get it from her and out of the plastic. Instead, she says, “I was wondering if you could tell me how long this duck has been dead.”
She opens the bag, I look in. All that’s in the bag is two duck feet.
Not knowing quite what to say, I tell her that I really can’t tell her when the duck died (biting my tongue against saying “but I think it’s too late to save it”). She keeps looking at me like she wants something further. So, I comment that I think it’s interesting that the webbing on the feet is still intact. Based on the fact that the ants haven’t picked the feet clean, perhaps the bird is recently deceased? She jumped on that with almost an “ah ha, so you think it died a short time ago?” She mentions that she’s heard that there’s an eye witness saying that he saw a coyote attacking a duck a few days ago. Well, if a coyote has found the lagoon he’s in for some good eatin’. Actually, I didn’t say exactly that, but I did mention the circle of life and all.
Still she looked at me as if she wanted something more. I told her again that I thought the intact webbing was interesting, but that identifying time-of-death really wasn’t what we do there, and that most of the duck feet we see are still attached to the bird. Finally she left. Whether she was satisfied or not, I have no idea.
But suddenly I have an idea to expand the franchise even further: CSI: WildCare.
I loved this story!