Jesse

I was hiking a game trail about a mile south of the station, a route I'd walked many times.

The trail followed the ridgeline through a stand of old-growth silver fir, trees that were three and four feet in diameter with bark-like cracked gray plates.

The understory was huckleberry and salal and sword fern.

It was a beautiful stretch of forest.

The elk was about thirty feet off the trail, in a small clearing between two firs.

It was a cow elk, full-grown, probably six or seven hundred pounds.

It was dead.

It was lying on its side with its legs extended, as if it had been running and fallen mid-stride.

The eyes were open and clouded.

The tongue was out.

There was no visible cause of death.

No wounds, no blood, no signs of a predator attack.

The hide was intact, the belly was intact, nothing had fed on it.

But the head was wrong.

The head was turned completely around, not partially, not at an angle.

The cow elk's head was rotated 180 degrees on its neck.

so that the chin pointed straight up and the top of the skull pressed against the ground.

The neck wasn't broken in the way a neck breaks when it's twisted by force.

There was no distortion, no bulging, no visible damage to the skin or muscle.

The head had been rotated smoothly, as if the spine had been unscrewed and turned like a lid on a jar.