Two years ago I shared some photos taken with our wildlife camera. It’s worth popping over to that post if you want to see some of our neighbors.

For the longest time we had the camera pointed on our pond to catch a glimpse of the wildlife, but recently I’ve been itching to do something more with it. A fortuitous moment made that possible!

About a month ago I heard a car hit something, and it turned out to be a young deer that died instantly. This was my moment! We were sad for the deer, but curious to see what would happen to its body if left alone in the wild.

We dragged the deer away from the road, pointed the camera at it. On each image you can see the date and time stamps.

For the first few days, the only visitors were magpies. We think that they were pecking off bugs and possibly eating some of the carcass, but the body wasn’t changing that much.

Then the maggots arrived. There were thousands of them, and I’m bummed that I didn’t take a video to document that phase. Eventually the body started to smell, but it wasn’t so overpowering as to make us regret the experiment. The fox came and smelled around the body.

Eventually a bear came a dragged it off! It’s the image dated Sept 12th. Unfortunately his back was to the camera, so we didn’t get a great shot. But this was such a fun reminder for the all of us that bears are omnivores. They will eat carrion when they come across it, and they definitely eat insects, so we’re guessing the maggots were a nutritious treat.

After the first bear showed up and took the carcass, the very next night another bear stopped by for a sniff. Based upon size, we think that they are two different bears, and looking closely at the second bear, it appears that she’s a mom who has had cubs!

Since this experiment was such a success, we’re excited to set up another one when the opportunity comes along.