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He nodded again.
“What killed this one? Old age?”
The man looked at her and shrugged.
“The coat looks healthy, it looks young, well fed,” he said. “I don’t think it was old age.”
“What then?”
“Well,” he said, “I was a biologist at the US Department of Agriculture, my background is in plants, not animals, but my guess is that if you cut that animal open, you’d find that it had died by exsanguination.”
“Which means…”
“Blood loss.”
The words gave Saber a chill.
“I’ve seen it about a dozen times now. Never seen it in a coyote ’til today. Mostly deer, almost always deer, in fact. Never birds, never rodents. Deer, a raccoon, and a beautiful lynx that had looked absolutely perfect other than the fact that she was dead.”
“And you… cut them all open?”
“No, no,” he said, shaking his head. “The first time I saw it, it was because I came upon a deer with its throat cut, but there was no blood on the ground, and no evidence of decomposition. Theydodecompose, but at a different rate due to lack of moisture, and they don’t seem to attract larger forest scavengers. Notice you can’t smell anything? The death smell? It’ll come, but not for another few days. It’s very,verystrange.”
“What would cause it?”
“I really couldn’t say,” he said. “I’ve written to biologists at a few universities. Some have gotten back to me. They seem to think that either I’m mistaken about the nature of these animal’s deaths, or that it’s interesting, but on the list of environmental catastrophes, mine doesn’t rank very high.”
Saber looked at him.
She didn’t get the vibe that he was crazy.
“The natural world is in crisis,” he said. “I believe now, after many years, that man is like the scorpion fromAesop’s Fables. Do you know that story?”
“I’ve heard it,” Saber said. “But I don’t remember exactly how it goes.”
“A scorpion gets a ride across the water on the back of a frog, and halfway across he stings the frog, dooming them both.”
“I remember now,” she said. “The scorpion says, ‘I’m sorry, it’s my nature.’”
The man laughed.
“Yes, that’s it. We know we’re living on a fragile planet, but we choose to destroy it, because we can’t help always wanting more, always wanting material things, wealth, status. It’s our nature.”
Saber looked down at the dead coyote.
“What does that have to do with these animals?”
The man took a deep breath and exhaled slowly.
“I have only seen this, thisphenomenon, for about five years, and I’ve lived on the island for thirty. I don’t know what’s causing it, but if I had to bet, I’d guess it has something to do with people. It’s not natural. This island was mostly woods until just a few decades ago, and now it’s an enclave for the very rich, set apart from Seattle, with all its crime and homelessness.”
“But why would a person do this?”
“People are vampires,” he said. “It’s their nature.”
“I still don’t get why or how—”
“Me neither, and I don’t know, I guess I don’t care about thehow. When I was younger it would have made me morbidly fascinated. Now it just makes me sad.”
