A large slab of mincemeat found in my garden!

[Orangebadger]

So my dog had been hanging around the back of the garden shed this morning for a lot longer than normal, eventually came back on for breakfast. But straight away back out again, I then noticed a red lump of something that initially I thought was an old shoe. Dog loves smelly shoes so would explain why she was out a lot. Anyway I did not investigate as it's freezing and I am also sick right now. But probably should have checked that it was a shoe and thought what is that doing there, but I did not. Roll on an hour later, DD has taken dog for a walk and when she's come back straight to the garden carrying this red thing when I now realise this is not a shoe... it's about 1kg of mince meat!

WTH chucks that into a neighbours garden?? Why don't you just freeze it and put it out with the next rubbish? So it's one of 2 neighbours at the back of the garden, neighbour 1 would probably struggle to get in the corner as their shed is wedged in there, but not totally impossible. Neighbour 2 could easily just chuck it behind our shed. I think it's neighbour 2, they look like they are doing a massive clear out as all windows and doors are open ( it's 2 degrees!)

So DH thinks we should leave it as a one off, I don't agree. I would quite happily knock on their door and ask/ them, or write a note and pop it though there door.

What to do??

Remember when Ozzy threw a ham over his neighbour's fence?

I first thought mincemeat as in mince pies before I opened the thread.
If the garden is fox proof, maybe a seagull?

Growing up we had a cat who appeared late one christmas eve with a pheasant that someone had clearly left out to hang. It was years ago, before you'd find shops that opened on Christmas Day - no idea what the people would have eaten for lunch, he must have carried it some distance, and several obstacles.

Hop dog is OK - although I wouldn't have jumped to the poison assumption.

Cats are unlikely to have bought anything. Brought, maybe!

my cat once came through the cat flap with a pork chop still in its plastic supermarket wrapping - clearly stolen from someones kitchen. I think it's more likely to be something like that - cat, fox or bird, carrying the pack and the meat fell out.

I'm surprised that on MN no one has yet suggested that your house has been marked by burglars or someone trying to steal your dog.

Foxes, or bird of prey (loads of red kites here) probably. They're surprisingly strong, but not as strong as they think they are, hence the abandoned mince.

They are but the post clearly described a slab of minced beef or similar. I don’t think anyone is confused on reading the whole post.

Foxes can easily scale very high fences, they would be my bet.

@DowntonShabbie you are correct and my mistake while writing in a hurry. It should read minced meat.

Sorry that was me, stashed it for later. Do you still have it? I could give you my address?! 😁

Could a red kite have dropped it then? I remember people feeding them when we lived in the south of England. It was a practice that wasn't universally loved because of this type of incident.

Fox cat or large bird

@PandaChopChop I am in the SE on the outskirts of SW London. So not huge numbers of kites like in other parts of the SE but I see the odd one so it's a possibility this was a Kite drop!

Long shot, but do they have kids, one of whom might have been asked to dispose of said meat in the compost bin? Our neighbours’ son used to throw his baby sister’s nappies over the fence. Thankfully they were bagged😆 He probably didn’t want to touch the bin!

OMG!!!

Bird dropped it.
Edited because I re read it and realised it wasn’t cake!
still going bird or fox. My corvids love a bit of meat, and you are advised raw is better than cooked.

It is in a large slab but it's not frozen so pretty fresh as bright red.

One of my colleagues threw a sausage roll over the fence when his militant vegetarian girlfriend arrived home unexpectedly!

Not mince though...

I agree it's too large amount of meat to be poisoned. Surely someone would put smaller bits out that would go unnoticed by people but not by greedy mutts?

My sisters cat used to go in peoples houses and nick peoples meat

They do have children so possible!

We occasionally find bits of meat and once a slice of pizza in our garden 😆😆 always just assumed it’s foxes/cats/birds.

This. Our cat once jumped over our fence with a string of half-defrosted sausages. They had clearly been stolen from someone's kitchen/bin. I didn't try and find out what house they came from (and I left him out to eat them!)

Foxes have relatively small stomachs and will cache food for later so it’s entirely possible it’s grabbed the mince, left it in a “safe place” and is now lurking and muttering about “bloody dog, giving the game away.” It might have found a bin with lots of post-Christmas food, and be making cache drops all over the neighbourhood.
https://derbyfoxes.org.uk/fox-food-cacheing/

@WolfFoxHare ’’ One of our cats once brought home a whole cooked chicken’’ :
This is so funny! how did she manage to carry the whole chicken? And so sweet, she brought it home to feed you. Awwww! 😍