a snowy woods with social conventions...!

[Phil Henshaw-2]

I was lucky enough to pick the right weekend to visit a Central NY
friend with a home in the woods two days after the big snow on
Wednesday, and spent three days making and following trails.   Making
your way through three to four foot powdery snow with either snow shoes
or skis is quite a challenge, but it takes you places that are totally
inspiring in their beauty.   One thing you see is that when a woods gets
that much snow it's also harder for the animals to get around.   The
deer make their winding narrow trails, or take soaring bounds, 12-15
feet at a leap with their front and hind feet landing in exactly the
same spot and explosively blowing away deep funnels of snow, just
amazing.   All the other wild ground animals in the snow jump or hop.
You see their tracks all over, even crossing your own trail no more than
a minute old (you can tell the freshness by the constant drifting), but
you just never see the deer or the other animals, or even hear them
despite the snowy woods being as silent a place as you could find.
Apparently they're all around and know just where you are.    It's
almost eerie how busy the place apparently is and you see nothing.
 
The weird thing worth mentioning here was that Saturday and Sunday were
clearly rabbit and squirrel days, and Monday was definitely mouse day.
I'm not sure what there is for a rabbit to do in four feet of snow, but
there were trails from two kinds of rabbits all over on the first two
days we were out, a normal sized bunny with the classic closely grouped
four paw prints with the rear paw prints in front, and then a tiny
version of the same thing.   The 'tiny rabbit', as yet unidentified, had
the same paw print geometry but was small enough to be a miniature.
There were also the messier squirrel trails with their broad tail drags
here and there.  The rabbit tracks, both large and miniature, were
extremely neat with never any sign of a tail drag.  You could often see
where they started, in the case of the rabbits just starting where they
shook off their snow cover or the squirrel trails starting where they
jumped a ways out from a tree or took a detour along a fallen branch
they used for a bridge.  
 
Then on Monday ALL the rabbit and squirrel tracks disappeared and there
were dozens of mouse trails.    The mouse trails were extremely complex
and delicate, almost looking like a skeleton necklace pressed into the
snow, and always with the thin line of their tail drag linking each body
press mark.   They would start at little round holes an inch in diameter
and would sometimes disappear into them too.   There were dozens of
these trails, some traveling in parallel pairs, but wandering hither and
yon like they were just out zooming all around in the snowy wonder land
like the people were.    Nothing in the tracks of any animal looked like
intent foraging, and I can't for the life of me figure out why on
Saturday and Sunday there wasn't a single mouse trail and then on Monday
there was nothing else.   Saturday was sunny and Sunday there were snow
showers on and off all day then Monday it was sunny and a little colder.
That's all.  
 
It's totally guessing, but all I can think of is that the mice waited a
little longer to venture out to look around, and the others had needed
to switch borrows after the big snow, or something, and by Monday had
finished their business and resettled.   Sensing how all the forest
animal communities acted as a whole gave much the same impression as
standing there looking straight up through the tall waving sticks of the
red pines swaying with the wind in synchrony.
 

Phil Henshaw                       ????.?? ? `?.????
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
680 Ft. Washington Ave
NY NY 10040                      
tel: [phone]                
e-mail: sy <mailto:pfh at synapse9.com> @synapse9.com          
explorations:  <http://www.synapse9.com/> www.synapse9.com    
 
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