Poor pete

A few weeks ago D told me that one of the petes had died under our back porch. I logged the info in my brain and immediately forgot about it.

A few days later I stepped out onto the back porch and there was an awful, I mean AWFUL, smell - but I was only getting it in small whiffs. I knew it was a dead animal, but I couldn't tell where the smell was coming from.

The next day, the smell was worse and I couldn't even stay outside because it was so raunchy. As I stepped back inside, I remembered what I had forgotten - there's a dead pete out there! I went back out and took a look; sure enough, poor pete was there. I gagged and told D he needed to haul it off. Which he promptly refused to do, saying it wouldn't stink in a day or two. I hate to say it, but he was right. Two days later, poor pete's bones were still there, but the smell and any other remnants were gone.

We have no idea what happened to pete; it looks like he just laid down and passed away quietly. There were no obvious injuries and no blood. I'm not sure why he chose the area under our porch for his final resting place; generally wild rabbits run away from humans. A lot of animals will seek out a solitary place when they know they're dying, so I'm baffled as to why he would go under our porch. Maybe he felt close to us because we feed the birds and petes and he wanted to die close to his food source? And I want to know why he died. Did something scare him to death? Did he have a heart attack? Was he old and just die of natural causes? Did he eat some kind of poison? I don't know.....

This leaves me in the same quandry as the old woman who swallowed a fly, I don't know why she swallowed the fly.... been trying to figure that one out since I was five lol.