Hey! Who's Eating Our First Flower of Spring?

I confess:  I've hunkered down in a sulk much of this week, hardly venturing outdoors at all, so I haven't had much to blog about.  Darn this icy snow and continued cold!  Not a single sign of spring seems to be budging in the woods.  But at last we've had a few days (and even nights!) above freezing, so some of the snow has started to go.  Many woodland trails, though, are still icy and uninviting, as this photo of Bog Meadow Nature Trail reveals.

I went to Bog Meadow today, in desperate need of finding at least ONE blooming plant of Skunk Cabbage.  There's a tiny stream that follows the trail, and I figured its banks would be teeming with the bulging spathes of our very first flower of spring.  They've always been there in years past.

Well, I searched and searched and finally spied the tell-tale red of some mottled spathes right in the middle of the stream.  Peering closer to see if the spadices within had ripened enough to bear pollen, I was disappointed to discover that the spathes had been ripped apart, with no sign of any spadices within.

I continued my search for Skunk Cabbage in a springy section of woods, and again and again discovered the spathes bitten open, the spadices long gone.

Whoever was eating the flowers, was also devouring the unfurling leaves.

The likely culprit seemed to be deer, especially since the surrounding snow was thoroughly trodden by the deers' signature two-toed hooves.

But how can deer manage to eat Skunk Cabbage?  If I were to take a bite of one, my mouth would burn for hours, lips and tongue stabbed by the calcium oxalate crystals this plant contains.  I might more comfortably eat a piece of prickly cactus.

Curious to know how deer get away with it, I searched the internet and found a site from the Alaska Department of Fish and Game,  informing me that deer do indeed eat a LOT of Skunk Cabbage, especially in spring when they crave the protein-rich spadices, after the meager diet they've subsisted on all winter.  According to a wildlife biologist quoted at this site, deer somehow manage to eat many plants that other animals would find chemically or physically noxious, including such intimidatingly prickly plants as Devil's Club.  Apparently, they manage to do this because they eat a huge variety of plants, so that the noxious plants are in effect diluted.

I don't know.  It seems the deer at Bog Meadow were eating an awful lot of Skunk Cabbage.  I could not find a single plant that hadn't been opened and eaten.