There were a pair of unusual tracks across my front lawn when I inspected the property on Wednesday. Two large animals walked right past my front door, not twenty feet from the cabin. The tracks were several days old and I found no sharp details – no pads, no clawmarks, nothing truly indicative. The impressions were more or less circular (an indistinct cross between a circle and a triangle), the larger animal’s about six inches in diameter, and the smaller’s about five inches in diameter.
It’s easy to make mistakes identifying animals in snow which has melted some – we had a thaw Sunday, and temperatures in the forties – but I would presume that the warm weather brought out the bears. There are identifiable bobcat, coyote, and human tracks around, all of which went through the same thaw and refreeze, and none of them look like this.
It’s a bit frustrating seeing all the tracks sometimes. How come I don’t get to see the animals themselves? It’s worse during the winter, because (naturally) I spend a lot less time outdoors, and my chances of actually seeing anything are quite reduced. What’s more, it’s unlikely the bears would have come so near my cabin if they smelled the smoke from my fire. But there is always far more going on than appears – the snow provides a record of it.
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