THE BITTER END
Flash-frozen foxes and fish, plus a pair of battling moose encased in the ice
FLASH-FROZEN FOX
Hunter Franz Stehle, who found a dead fox encased in ice covering the Danube on 2 January, cut out a block of ice encasing the fox and put it on show in front of his family’s hotel at Fridingen in Baden-Wurttemberg, southwest Germany, until the ice melted. He suspected it had drowned and was then frozen solid. He had seen a frozen deer and a wild boar before finding the fox. The image features in a Twitter photo contest for the best animal carcass (#BestCarcass). BBC News, 13 Jan; Int. NY Times, 21 Jan 2017. PHOTO: Johannes Stehle/DPA/Alamy Live News.
FRIGID FISH
The fish in the photograph above look as if they have frozen to death in mid-jump, but what really happened is more complicated. In 2015, the area around Lake Andes in South Dakota had been suffering from drought, and water levels were low. Thick ice formed on the lake’s surface. Along with snow cover, it blocked out sunlight, preventing photosynthesis by algæ and other aquatic plants. Oxygen levels dropped and the fish suffocated under the icy surface, floating to the top in their thousands. At some point the ice may have expanded and, as it reached the shore, crumpled and shot upward, dead fish included. Or it’s possible that strong winds pushed the frozen water and its fishy contents upward into a 4ft (1.2m) ice wall. Kelly Preheim, who took this photograph, said the thousands of frozen fish on the lake drew “hundreds of bald eagles, various gulls and American crows,” who swooped in for the convenient feast. Huffington Post, 14 Jan; Int. NY Times, 28 Jan 2017.
ICY BATTLE
On 2 November 2016, Brad Webster, a science teacher in Unalakleet, a remote village on Alaska’s unforgiving western coast, came upon two moose frozen in battle and encased in ice. He photographed the massive animals poking through the ice as they lay on their sides with antlers apparently locked together. It was the end of moose rutting season, and the animals were probably fighting over a female moose. Jeff Erickson, another teacher in Unalakleet, also photographed the frozen animals when he went to check out the scene a couple days later with Webster. “It was such a surreal sight – so serene and quiet, but a stark vision of how brutally harsh life can be,” he wrote. Webster and a few others went back later and removed the animals from about 8in (20cm) of ice covering open water, recovering some of the spoiled meat for dog food and trapping bait.
For other flash-frozen animals, see FT331:73, 333:67, 336:22.