Catherinet,

I'm in central Florida. Thank you for checking that out with your friend for me. Now that you said it looked like a goat, I'm trying to imagine ... The only thing is I haven't seen any goats around the area here. What also puzzles me is that this so-called baby of something had rather sharp teeth. I'm thinking most animals aren't born with teeth until they're a little older .... not very sure if that applies to all animals though. My husband thought it had been eaten by a raccoon, but I thought maybe not. A raccoon supposedly chewed up a squirrel and left behind only the head and the tail. I felt sorry for that poor little guy.

The one on this picture looked mostly intact which made me think it wasn't being chewed up. What really kept me curious is that it didn't have any skin/hair on it.

Hi again bananafan,

I wrote to my friend and showed her the picture and she agreed with you that it must be a small opossum. What I was seeing as hooved feet she said were actually the ends of the leg bones.....the feet are gone. It is very curious that any predator would just remove the skin and not eat the meat. She said she thought she could see canine teeth, which I guess opossums have. Could you see a tail on it? The skin/hair pulled around the head is whitish, as in an opossum.

Adding my own comment, this is very strange! I would almost venture to say that a human did awful things to this poor little animal. Do you live in town or in the country?

I think I might even report it to someone. I really think it was done by a human. :(

Do you have anyone around there that might have some funky beliefs? Sorry to be so negative, but it just doesn't make sense to me that it was done by another animal.

Thanks for getting back to me, Catherinet. I did a little more reading and found out that like rats, the newly born opossums are hairless and they do have teeth like this picture (downloaded from the internet) here shows:

I also realized that the opossums do build nests like birds do on the tree, but they can also build nests elsewhere such as under the hoot of a car (as pictured above).

Close to where the dead animal was found were a couple of huge trees among other fruit trees I have in my yard. We had Hurricane Hermine blowing down things for us this past week. I think that might help explain a lot of the mystery as I begin to piece things up together. A family of opossum might have taken residence there. The young could have died in the nest earlier on or it might have died when the wind blew it down from the nest. The limbs could have easily chipped off as it fell down from a height. Since they're newly born, I would imagine their limbs are very fragile. The fact that the skin peeling off might be due to the animal drying out at some point and then having to stay out in our hot sun here for who knows how long until I discovered it. These speculations are all very plausible and it made a lot of sense to me now as I've seen mature opossums around in my yard sometimes.

I think not to suspect anything else ... unless I see a repeat of a similar incident. I know ... I'm always nervous when I see dead animals lying around. You don't know what they carry with them ..., but RIP little guy and no more carcasses in my yard!

Thanks again--I do appreciate your input.

lt's a mystery, for sure! I hope your house didn't get damaged in the storm.

Sorry to say it, but that has to have been done by a human. The lower parts of the legs are too systematically removed, and the animal is definitely skinned, not hairless. There is no skin on that carcass, and you can see the tendons, bones and dried muscle tissue easily. The only animals that were eating it are bugs. Quite disturbing, but some people do very twisted things to those that cannot defend themselves or speak up.