Scat, Tracks, and Sudden Snow Squalls

What is is with all the wild game on the place using the road to the back of the farm for a latrine? Deer, rabbits, skunks, coyotes, foxes, turkeys, and mysterious creatures that may have come down from Mars just to produce scatological evidence. 

There are tracks too, many, many tracks. Some are obvious, once again, deer, yotes, foxes, and such, and lots of little sharp-nailed, pointy-toed critters of various sorts. I followed what I thought was a 4-wheeler trail into a field we haven't worked in a couple of years. It was beaten right down and I was muttering about danged trespassers only to find that it petered out into a dozen narrower trails....a set of animal paths instead.

Today there were snow squalls and cold southwest wind screaming through the Samaras on the Box Elders, about the only thing left on any of the trees. Even the oak leaves are now scattered across the fields like so many secret notes, dropped from somewhere in the sky, to be read only by passing mice and voles and missed by ent princesses who migrated south with the warblers.

It was an interesting walk just after dawn this morning, even if nearly devoid of any birds except crows, geese and goldfinches. It's pretty out there on a wild morning like this, but it was good to get back to the house and out of the wind.