When I arrived at my cabin property early yesterday morning, the first thing I noticed was a swath of small pawprints in a skiff of snow on the roadway. The prints extended under my gate and across the bridge toward my cabin.
The lower cross-rail on my gate
is only a foot or so above the ground.
In order to walk under the gate, the critter had to have a fairly low
profile. Given the size of the prints, my
first guess was a member of the weasel family.
The prints looked somewhat like those of a raccoon, but the backside was
not filled-in as racoon prints are. And I
have never seen a raccoon anywhere near my cabin.
After opening my gate, I
captured several images of the tracks I saw with my smarter-than-me-phone.
I have long imagined that much
of our writing might have been inspired by our ancient predecessors seeing the written
language of tracks. Tracks in snow tell particularly
long and vivid tales.
A tracker I am not. Only after I studied the images upon arriving
at home, did it occur I had pictures of the crossing of two different
animals.
On the bridge, the individual
prints for one set of tracks were much bigger, they projected in a straight
line, and the foreclaws were showing in front.
I am thinking fox on those.
I am not sure about the smaller
print (pictured near my hand).
I need to learn how to read the
written language of tracks in snow.
Print Next to My Hand
Hand With Many Prints
Tracks Across the Bridge
—Mitchell Hegman
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