A friend of mine had a barn owl (rescue) that lived for a while in their kitchen. They would feed it rats, and in the morning, the owl would have eaten it all, except for the entrails, which were carefully arranged across the dial of the rotary phone. Therefore: owl.
The dog I had as a kid would start with the head on smaller rabbits, but went for the innards first on bigger ones.
I’m not saying it was aliens, but it was aliens.
All I could think of was one very sick person who did this as a prank, but some of you are saying otherwise. That’s somewhat of a relief.
I realize that this post is old, but curious as to whether the predator was ever identified. I had the exact same experience last week. A perfect, almost surgical pile of guts on a small walkway beside our house. Stomach, liver all intestines. No blood, just a neat pile. I found a rabbits hind leg nearby, so know that much. I’m trying to figure our what predator in our area would do this–I have small dogs!
I also acknowledge the age of the thread but how on earth do you train a cat to eat it’s prey in a bathtub?
Oddly easy. Every time Banzai would happily wander in with something small and squeeky in his mouth, I would grab him, carry him into the bathroom, drop them into the tub and slide the door shut on them until he was bored and asleep or finished eating. Then I would let him out and clean up the innards. After about a month he would wander into the bathroom with his snack, jump into the tub and have a nosh.
Ran over a jackrabbit once. His still-beating heart was found some distance forward, while the guts were backwards. Sometimes animals are just toothpaste tubes filled with meat.
Any time you find something done with serial killer precision, it’s likely a house cat.
I guess this thread is old enough to hijack?
When the current Old Cat and her brother were the Young Cats, they figured out that a live mouse dropped in a bathtub probably couldn’t get itself back out, and would be there for them to play with.
I spoiled that game, first by rescuing a couple of mice (at different times) and dumping them outdoors, then by getting in the habit of leaving the bottom of the cloth shower curtain inside the tub, so that any mice the cats tried to store in there would just get themselves back out again.
At some point during that time, I heard odd noises in a bathroom, and went to look. There in the empty tub was a cat; but just a cat. I decided she must have been chasing her tail, and was about to go off and leave her to it, when it occured to me that she was sitting in an odd position.
I reached in and picked up the cat. Sure enough – underneath her was a live and unhappy mouse. She’d been trying to hide it from me, because she knew I’d take it away.
I found a very large possum in the woods once that had its intestines ripped out through its stomach in a large, gaping wound. I always wondered what kind of predator did that, a dog, a human, or maybe a vulture? I don’t know it seemed odd.
I vote for a cat. My kitties have left similar messes before.
My understanding, although I don’t renember the source, is that a well fed predator animal such as a pet cat will kill a small animal and eat some of it but leave the organs.
A stray or feral predator will consume the organs as they are the most nutritious bits.
I can’t vouch for the veracity of this however.