The yearling cow elk started
showing up in the yard the first week of March, and at first
nothing seemed wrong. During the day she fed along the back fence;
as evening approached, she came in closer to the house, nibbling on
the first green sprouts of lawn before bedding down under the ash
trees.
This happened for a couple of days. The main herd
was not far way, a mile or so down valley, but the chocolate brown
and blond youngster seemed to have no interest in rejoining it.
“Maybe she got kicked out,” I said to my wife
one evening as we ate dinner and watched our “pet” elk
put its head down under the trees. She thought the animal was sick
and called Kirk Madariaga, our local Division of Wildlife agent.
Kirk said the young elk was likely starving to death, despite the
green grass. Often the young elk and deer don’t have enough
fat reserves to see them through the transition from dry winter
forage to green forage. “It’s nature’s way of
trimming the herd,” he said.
Nature’s way
peaks in March, just as winter relinquishes its grip. That makes
sense. March is a crazy transitional month, a time when life and
death live side by side. It’s a time when the nation’s
sports fans are gripped with do-or-die, nail-biting college
basketball games, when floods and tornados lash out, and when the
obituary pages of the local paper seem to fill with people who let
go just before the tilting of the globe.
Here in western
Colorado, March is when ranchers hope that Mother Nature will
forego the late spring blizzards that can turn deadly for their
calves, which, in just a few weeks, have grown from small freshly
dropped huddles in the fields to exuberant, long-legged toddlers.
It’s also the time when the birds return. Some have flown
thousands of miles to reach their nesting grounds, on the promise
that there will be something to eat when they arrive.
One
spring a large flock of wood pewees descended on our town, driven
down from the aspen trees by a late snowstorm. They perched quietly
on windowsills, fences and shrubs, as docile and tame as caged
canaries. The next day dozens of their almost weightless dead
bodies littered the yards, victims of the weather and the
neighborhood cats, which had never before seen — and probably
never will again — the bird hunting so good.
Our
little elk seemed to have a pretty substantial body, but Kirk told
us to look for a hollowness in front of the hips. “If
it’s there, then this elk is on its last legs, and there is
really nothing you can do. “
The hollowness was
there. I brought out a pan of oats and hay; the elk got up, and
walked away only a few yards as I set the pan down. She
didn’t touch the food, and lay down again. The next day she
died, her head angled back at an odd angle, eyes glazed like milky
ice. My son chained her hind legs to the 4–wheeler, and
dragged her to the far corner of the field. Maybe the coyotes,
eagles and magpies would gain some benefit from her carcass.
A couple of days later, I ventured up to take a look at
the elk. On my way, I stumbled upon another body, this time a doe
mule deer, nestled in the greening grass and the stiff brown stalks
of last year’s chickory. She almost looked alive, except her
eyes were gone, and a blood-smeared bone from one of her hind legs
jutted through her fur. The sickly sweet smell of death wafted in
the air.
So much death. And so much life. All around me,
the clear and sweet song of western meadowlarks rang out, declaring
their intention to produce new life in the grass. And far above,
the faint bugling of sandhill cranes on the move, in March.
Range, a service of High Country News. He is the
publisher of High Country News (www.hcn.org) in
Paonia, Colorado.
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