The Dead Bird Problem

What do you do with a dead bird that rolls in from the waves onto your lakefront, tangled among the requisite blunted sticks and plastic whatnots?

In this case, the bird was pretty ripe.

So—what to do?

About fifty yards up from my lakefront, there’s an interesting red anthill. Some fifteen or twenty years ago, the ants started their pile alongside a prickly pear cactus. All these years later, the cactus has grown freakishly healthy within the anthill. Me being me, I regularly walk up the hill just to watch the ants teeming over the pile.

What if I could give nature a boost in a strange way? What if I scooped up the bird with a shovel and placed it beside the anthill? Would the ants—along with flies and beetles—scavenge and repurpose the bird?

I’ve posted photographs of the bird and the anthill.

Let’s see what happens.

—Mitchell Hegman