NEBRASKAland Magazine is dedicated to outstanding photography and informative writing with an engaging mix of articles and photos highlighting Nebraska’s outdoor activities, parklands, wildlife, history and people.
Issue link: https://mag.outdoornebraska.gov/i/1546643
August-September 2026 • Nebraskaland 69 The Last Stop Revisited Tree Skull By Eric Fowler I was taught long ago to never assume anything. I forgot that rule when I wrote "Tree Skull" for the May issue of Nebraskaland, in which I didn't just get one fact wrong, but two. The story accompanied a photo of a skull hanging in a pawpaw tree at Indian Cave State Park. I spotted it in 2018 while checking camera traps I had set there in hopes of capturing a photo of a mountain lion. Sam Wilson, the Game and Parks furbearer biologist, was hoping for more than photos. He wanted to trap the lion and place a radio collar on it. To up his odds, and mine, he dragged dozens of road-killed deer to that area of the park for bait. When I spotted the skull, I instantly assumed it was the skull from one of those deer, began looking for the best composition for a photo, and never closely inspected the skull in person or in my photos. And everyone I showed the photo to assumed I knew what I was talking about. When 16-year-old Eli Cox of Burwell was reading the issue and came to the photo, he said "Cool coyote skull," and then read the article to find my mistake. His mother, Hanna, said they doubted him, but should have known better. Eli spends his winters trapping and skins and tans the hides of the animals he catches. He even has a colony of dermestid beetles to clean skulls that fill a shelf in their home. Included in that collection is a coyote skull that proved he was right. It gets worse for me. I assumed and wrote that the tree had sprouted beneath the skull and lifted it off the forest floor. Long-time subscriber Larry Williams of Lincoln wrote and let me know that tree branches do not grow higher as a tree ages: They remain at the height they sprouted from the trunk. Friend and former co-worker Mike Groenewold confirmed Williams' point and gave me the same biology lesson he shared with school children during his 40 years as a Game and Parks horticulturist. "A tree doesn't grow out of the forest floor like Jack and the Beanstalk," Groenewold said. "Say I'm a tree and you drove a nail in my belly button. In 10 years, how high would that nail be?" The answer is exactly the same height. "Apparently someone just hung it in the pawpaw at that height is how I would explain it," Groenewold said. Groenewold did say I was correct on one point. Trees add a layer of tissue every year ... like putting another glove on your hand … and the circumference of the tree likely outgrew that of the coyote's (note the correction) eye socket, breaking the bone and sending the skull back to the forest floor. Like every publication, we strive for accuracy at Nebraskaland. Sometimes, mistakes happen, and we run corrections. This isn't my first. I'll try to make it my last.