Super, Secret Decomposition

What a grabber for a title, huh?

Sunday morning when we drove to church, there was a dead deer beside the road about 1/4 mile from our house. We seem to get a lot of roadkill along this stretch, but it's all been raccoons and one rabbit so far.

We also have a VERY healthy vulture population and we've seen them many times cleaning up the raccoons.

Well, by the time Mr. GT and the buds came home from church, around lunchtime, the vultures were already doing their job. Six of them flew up from the deer as our van passed by.

Sunday night I could hear the coyotes howling. In fact, they woke me up at 2 am. Monday morning the deer was about 3 feet to the left of where it had begun and its insides were already hollow, ribs showing.

Every time we drive by it, I slow down and we check it out. It's been interesting to watch and we've talked a lot about the job of scavengers and marveled at how quickly the deer has been disappearing even with cool temperatures (only in the 70s this week). We've also discussed the difference between this deer, out in the country, and deer we've seen along the 4 lane highway who seem to lay there for a week nearly unchanged. We surmised that maybe the amount of traffic keeps the scavengers from doing their jobs.

Sunday evening Mr. GT invited me to go for a walk with him. Actually, what he said, while looking at me across the dinner table was, "Do you want to go for a walk with me?" Immediately, 5 little voices piped up, "Yes! Me!" Disappointment abounded when they found out I was the only one invited. He and I went for a walk up the very quiet side road and watched the sunset, listened to the silence and sniffed up all the summer roadside smells. But not decomposing deer. This was the other direction.

I had to switch my shifts this week because Grandma and Grandpa were coming Tuesday. I found someone to trade with me, but that meant I had to work on Wednesday.

So Monday night I announced we were going on a Super, Secret Monday Adventure since I wouldn't be home on Wednesday. My plan was to take the kids for a walk up the side road where Mr. GT and I had walked the night before.

They never have any idea what we're doing until we are actually doing it, although they do try to guess. I told them they needed shoes for walking and we all headed out to the garage. They started to pile into the van, but I grabbed the stroller and headed back out onto the lawn.

The kids scampered back out and began dancing around the lawn. "A walk! We're going on a walk!" Suddenly, Rose Bud froze in her tracks and looked at me.

"Nooooo. NOOOOOO. Uh uh! Noooo!" she said slowly, in a horrified voice.

Then I realized what SHE was thinking and cracked up! "No," I said, laughing. "We are NOT walking up to look at the deer!!! We can hardly drive by it with the windows down already. We are not walking anywhere near it!"

We had a lovely, peaceful, death-free walk along the quiet road and when we came home, we ate ice cream sundaes.