Snow Friends

Letting the dogs out just before dawn earlier this week revealed a dark shadow in the snow under the butternut tree; apparently a piece of limb had fallen in the night. Closer inspection revealed the unmistakable tracks of a running rabbit, intersected by the sweep of a wing in otherwise undisturbed snow.

A crime scene – a murder I thought, even though it didn’t involve crows. I then realized that though the rabbit gave his life, there was nothing sinister at work here. The dogs and I had inadvertently interrupted someone’s breakfast, maybe the owl who reports from the treeline beyond the yard, his lonely, mournful hoot often drifting through the night, dusk or dawn.

Above, these friends frolic in the bright sunshine, leaving happy tracks along with their human’s ski tracks; the joy of spending a cold winter’s day outside evident in their faces and tails.

In darkness or light, the snow witnesses, and at least until windblown or melted, records, the playful and necessary comings and goings of neighborhood beings.