Before holing up for a winter night I take the bird feeder and suet cage onto the porch, or else I'll be woken up later hearing fuss and turn up the floodlamp on an obese raccoon hanging upside down from the wire grabbin' at the suet cage, or waddling off with it...
And the porch door's warped, so after I shut it from the inside I have to go outside and kick it firmly closed (can you say
Green Acres?) and I happened to look down...
(Heard a joke today. What's the difference between an introverted engineer and an extroverted engineer? The introverted engineer looks down at his feet. The extroverted engineer looks down at
your feet...)
. . . and saw bunny tracks, and my heart was filled with delight. I love their "Y"-shaped track. Bunnies used to own this place but numbers have been down in recent years. So happy to see evidence of my otherwise invisible, secretive little friends. P.S. Rabbits are not rodents. They are members of the deer family.
I took a beautiful Sunday slog down LaBarque creek when the water was low, and along the creek edges and wet sand bars I saw evidence of wildlife traffic, come to the creek for a drink. Traces of ice were in the water that had been left in shadow; I broke it up like plate glass and pushed it downstream so more creatures could come to the creek edge and drink. What we have here is raccoon tracks stylized in wet sand and a three-toed footprint of a very large and heavy bird (each toe the length of my ring finger). Wondered what it was -- the LaBarque hosts herons and egrets, but it looks most like the track of a turkey. If it had been a heron the footprint would have had a less splayed, more slender profile and have a lighter fourth toeprint in back. So it could be an egret, but the fact is we've got more turkeys. Actually we are fortunate to have plenty of both.
