FOOTPRINTS IN THE SNOW 



417 



melting* snows will reveal. The makers 

 of the prints above are the burrowers 

 who push their ramifications in the 

 depths beneath. Everywhere are count- 

 less toothmarks on the bark of the 

 smaller trees. The alder, sumac, sas- 

 safras, and raspberry are some of those 

 which show the voracious appetites of 

 these miniature beavers. Diminutive 

 beavers they really are, for they cut 

 down shrubs half an inch thick, and 

 cut them up into lengths of two or three 

 inches, as if about to build a dam, as 

 perhaps their successors will in some 

 future age. 



Like everything in Nature the mouse 

 has his enemies, and often the trail 

 tells of a tragedy as plainly as if it 

 were enacted before our eyes. One 

 day while following tracks through a 

 swampy piece of ground I came upon 

 the track of a mouse. At first it dodged 

 in and out in the usual way, and then 

 led out into an open spot some couple 

 of hundreds of yards across. There 

 was ice beneath the snow over this 

 stretch and I wondered why our little 

 traveller had decided to cross it, seeing 

 that they usually evade these bare 

 places by going around under cover of 

 the shrubbery. The thought flashed 

 upon me, wouldn't this be a likely spot 

 for an owl to do his hunting? Fol- 

 lowing along, I soon saw that the track 

 lengthened out; the footprints became 

 less distinct, and a few yards further 

 they suddenly vanished. There on 

 either side of the last footprints were 

 the deep marks of a pair of wings, in 

 fact, the shape of the primaries were 

 plainly visible. About six feet further 

 on a few tiny drops of red on the white 

 snow showed that the mouse had met 

 its death by being pounced on by an 

 owl, and lifted off its feet by the winged 

 murderer. - 



The same day, a hound and a cotton- 

 tail rabbit furnished the principal ob- 

 jects in a scene which depicts the tracks 

 left by these sporty animals on the page 

 of winter. I did not see either of the 

 principals, but the story was as com- 

 plete as if I had witnessed it from start 



to finish. When I first came upon this 

 particular track, I noted that the leaps 

 of the rabbit were short, but on coming 

 to where a couple of men had crossed it 

 at right angles, it was plain that they 

 had also observed the trail of the cotton- 

 tail, as they had stopped, and one had 

 tried the freshness of the footprint, by 

 touching it with his finger. A dog was 

 with them, its big pads being visible 

 along with that of the men. The dog 

 needed no urging to take the trail of 

 Molly Cottontail, the branching off be- 

 ing regular, and without any prelimi- 

 nary marking up of the snow, as would 

 have been the case had the scent been 

 uncertain, or the hound unduly urged 

 to follow it by his master. The rabbit 

 I could see had preceded the dog only 

 a short time, as the latter cut corners, 

 when the former circled — a thing no 

 well-trained hound would have done 

 had the scent not been fresh, or he was 

 anyway uncertain about being able to 

 pick it up again. 



I have pictured one of these cut offs, 

 and it plainly tells how fresh the scent, 

 and how certain the dog was in follow- 

 ing his quarry. The chase was a long 

 one, and while it kept to the same sec- 

 tion of bush, it circled round and round 

 in a manner well known to all rabbit 

 hunters. I wished little bunny well, 

 and am hoping that had I followed it 

 to a finish, I should have found where 

 Molly had "holed up," and thus escaped 

 the hound and hunters. 



The tracks of the cottontail are a 

 study in themselves. The two prints in 

 front are made by the hind feet, while 

 the hind ones are set there by the front 

 feet. This is due to overreaching, a 

 feature one will not wonder at when he 

 sees the "doubling up" a rabbit makes 

 in the air with every bound he takes. 



While everybody nearly knows that 

 a rabbit's hind foot is larger than its 

 fore foot, there are few who can cor- 

 rectly tell the direction the animal is 

 travelling by looking at its tracks. A 

 reference to the two illustrations will 

 impress this better on the reader than a 

 long use of words. In the picture 



