What do you make of this please?
We were walking the dogs this afternoon when we got to a spot with a horrific smell, a mix of foxes and something dead. We soon found out why... DD1 spotted two dead foxes laying beside one another.
I must confess I couldn't go near them (would be a sobbing, shaking mess) but my calm, rational 14 yo (who's had a good home-ed grounding in wildlife and is pretty savvy) reported them to be probably a male and a small female, definately both adult, fairly recently dead, which makes sense as there was no such appalling smell on Friday, which is when we last took that route. The male had a golf-ball sized laceration to his back, raw flesh like when you come skidding off a bike but no indentation (I thought shotgun but DD reckons not). The female's torso was twisted with the rear legs in the opposite direction to the front. DD says it looked thus like she'd been thrown there.
They were right outside what looks like a foxhole by the river (the other side being a public footpath alongside farmer's fields).
Strikes me they weren't natural deaths, poor creatures, but if not, what? Any ideas?
If it's human involvement they don't want to meet me, that I can promise!