Could have been a opossum that found a carcass and finished it off on your pillow? Hawk sounds likely too but I don't know if it would bring it onto your porch.

I found a similar "present" of a rabbit in my barn one day, only just the spinal column nothing else. I assumed something like a coon or opossum had dragged roadkill into the barn. I couldn't imagine the cats eating a whole rabbit.

Red tailed hawks bring their prey to a fork in the tree outside our bedroom window. It's common to see rabbit, squirrel, bird carcasses left for vultures to finish off.

We have hawks and owls around here who do that. Several neighbors and I have found disembodied rabbits in our yards. I saw a hawk carry off a rabbit this summer.

Perhaps a pre Halloween prank, or an obscure warning a la sleeps with the fishes.

We have great horned owls, foxes...they leave bunny butts, bunny heads....it's nature.

When we lived in the country, our barn cats left little presents at the door all the time. DH had the title of Small Animal Parts Removal Specialist.

Beautiful and wondrous as it is, nature is also quite brutal. We were out for a walk once and the dogs found something of great interest. It turned out to be the front leg of a deer.

This is almost a Halloween thread. Bunny butts? Ha! Spinal columns and corpses? Ew!

Did I ever tell the story of the rabbit rear quarter that (we surmise) a hawk must have dropped into the yard? And the dogs were playing keepaway until I could grab it? Since it was a perfect rear quarter, we assume the coyites had torn it apart and then a hawk grabbed it hunk.

I doubt that an opossum caught a squirrel. It would have to had been a very fast opossum and squirrels can fight back with a nasty set of teeth. Opossums are faster than one might think, however, a squirrel is much faster and a speedy climber.

My guess is a hawk or owl that may not have eaten the entire carcass, and then a cat or dog could have moved it and finished it. It doesn't have to be your cat or dog; It could be any of those in your neighborhood including strays. An eagle would have taken its prey away to a place of its choosing. A fox or coyote could have done the deed, however, they would had to surprised the squirrel. Squirrels are very wary of the canine family and it is rare that one catches a squirrel.

It wasn't the resident pets in my house. My three cats are total house cats and the dogs had just been put outside for the first time that day. We don't have coyotes and rarely a fox has been seen, but we do have raptors. Last year walking down the street with the dog, a hawk almost ran into me carrying a squirrel. He was just taking off. I occasionally hear an owl at night so that's a possibility too. I had never encountered just a head and a complete skeleton with no fur, and we all know how fluffy a squirrel tail is. It looked like a rat tail. If I hadn't seen the face, I wouldn't have known what it was.

My guess is a hawk. One New Year’s Eve I got a shock of a chewed up squirrel in my house. After a party, with many family staying over, I made myself a bed on the couch. My big spitz always slept on my feet. She wanted to go out in the night and then came right back in. I kept hearing her licking and chewing during the night. I thought she had her rawhide. Early at dawn, my foot felt some fur, but it didn’t feel like my dog. I got up and turned the light on. I screamed bloody murder when I found a partial squirrel in the bed covers, and the dog grinning and wagging her tail.

Of course every hung over person came running out to the living room. Much coffee later, the consensus was the dog found a carcass in the yard and brought it in. I still hear “ Remember that New Year’s Eve.........?”

ladypat - ewww, just ewww! I'm reminded of the horse head scene in The Godfather. That must have been a horrible shock - yikes!

When I worked at the school, one of our bus drivers was also a wildlife rehabber. She was taking care of a bald eagle that some idiot shot in the wing and had put out a plea in the local paper for road kill so that she could feed the eagle it's natural diet.

I walked in to the office one morning and noticed a large paper bag on my desk. Thinking it was something a parent had left for one of their kids, I looked inside and found a couple of smushed squirrels and rabbits along with a note that they were for the eagle. What a way to start the morning - fun times, fun times!

One of our dogs was a successful hunter. She often caught voles, most often we knew because she rarely ate their feet. So we'd go out and find four little vole feet scattered near her favorite resting spot. Once DD found a half squirrel in the yard, but we were never sure a) who did it, and b) where the other half ended up.

I had a cat that would eat critters and he would leave a foot on my porch. Do you have a cat?

Does anyone remember the “dogs in elk” stories?

I have three cats who are strictly indoor cats. I doubt any cat would eat all that fur and pick the skeleton clean.

Does anyone remember the dogs in elk stories? I can’t locate the original as it appeared in our Gardenweb, but this is a link to what appears to be an abbreviated version of it.

then there was the story of the cat in the washing machine.

I found the pelt of a large chipmunk in my yard once... laid out like a bear skin rug but missing the head. Yuck. My vote is a hawk did it.

Yuck. When I was a kid our cats did that sort of thing all the time. It's one of the primary reasons I keep only indoor cats.

My guess is the same as everyone else's. Perhaps a hawk, or a neighborhood cat, or a combo of both? Gross. Sorry you had to find that. :(

Both of my cats came to me as strays and are indoor/outdoor cats. My oldest cat would catch birds and eat them on the doormat. I never saw her do it, only a stray feather or two and the gallbladder. I was always amazed that she knew not to eat the gallbladder.

You see your story is funny, because in it, a squirrel gets dead.

-Dug, from the movie "Up".