Tracked!

High: 38° F
Low: 19° F
Conditions: Partly cloudy with more snow on the way.

An unexpected snow squall brought a new inch of snow late last week. With it, came a renewed opportunity for caninaturalist investigation of the most sleuthy kind.

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Winter is a time of sparseness in the animal world—of slinking and hunkering, rather than parading and lounging. This can make canine naturalism tough. At first glance, there isn’t a lot of nature to observe, especially since those animals residing strictly outdoors find themselves low on food and energy. Most of our walks the past few weeks have been studies in a kind of Taoist emptiness, and it’s rare for us to see any creature other than an intrepid bird or two.

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Snow, however, makes our search a little easier. With it, an animal can escape our immediate notice while still allowing us to cross paths. And since each track includes enough skin cells to entice Ari’s expert nose, she experiences something at least as rich as locking eyes with an actual animal. In fact, the scent in these tracks seems to make her deliriously happy--moreso, sometimes, then seeing the actual species leaving the track. Her glee in turn pleases me. The hidden animal is no doubt relieved by the compromise, and all three of us leave the landscape happy, more or less.

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When this new snowfall arrived, we knew we had to get outside and investigate. We suited up in cross country skis and skijoring harness and left for the 50-acre town forest down the road. There, we encountered some of our favorite footprints:
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The serpentining trail of a single red fox (Vulpes vulpes) :

The deliberate hop of a snowshoe hair (Lepus americanus), located vulnerably nearby Mr. Fox:
The similarly proportioned, but more measured, pacing of a gray squirrel (Sciurus carolinensis) :

And finally, the well-packed superhighway of our local whitetail deer (Odocoileus virginianus) herds: .
At each set of footprints, Ari stopped our progress immediately (sometimes causing me to tangle my skis and come crashing down in the underbrush. Thank goodness for the padding of layered clothing and too many Valentine’s Day cookies). While the perennially clumsy human tried to right herself, the caninaturalist plunged her nose deeply into the track, savoring the bouquet of woodland animals.
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This process makes for a pleasant pace, assuming I’m not late for class or on my way to a meeting. And for the most part, Ari is a good sport about restricting herself to a few deep breaths before willingly moving on. But halfway through our early morning ski, all of that changed. A new track appeared on the trail:

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With four round front pads and a thick center heel, this track matched Ari’s in length and beat it in width. It would be tempting to classify it as canine, were it not for the breadth of the pads and the noticeable absence of claws. This was a cat. A very big cat.
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Ari took a few tentative sniffs and registered wary concern. The smell was probably a little reminiscent of her housemates, Mouse and Leila Tov, but it was much gamier and considerably more intense. These were not tracks left by pampered house cats.

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So what was it? According to my colleague, wildlife professor Jim Nelson, the size and distribution of the tracks suggests we were either following a very big bobcat (Lynx rufus) or a not inconsequential lynx (Lynx canadensis). Either way, this was a serious feline—at least according to Northeast standards.

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We skied on, following the tracks closely. The caninaturalist, no longer interested in bounding ahead (and thus making herself an easy snack), trotted close to my hip, tangling us both in the jore line. I think she was hoping any predator would choose to nosh on the more visible human before feasting on timid dog. Even teasing her cowardice and threatening to destroy her street cred back home wasn't enough. Ari was insistent: we would head into the woods together. No ifs, ands, or buts.

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We hobbled the way around the rest of our ski loop, tripping one another and arguing about who would go first around particularly tight bends. And then the plot thickened even more.

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As we neared the start of our course, we both stopped. There, just ahead, were the tracks we had left skiing the mile from the car to the start of our loop. And there, on TOP of our ski tracks were more giant cat tracks. We were being followed.

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Ari smelled the ski tracks, her own petite prints, and then the overlayed feline paws. She flattened her ears and raised her hackles. This would not do. I have to admit I felt my own shiver of mortality as I watched her assess the scene. Neither bobcats nor lynx share the predatory aggression of mountain lions and other big cats—at least when full-grown huskies and humans are concerned. Even still, I couldn’t help realizing: we had become theoretical prey.

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We made our way back to the car quietly and with more deliberation than necessary. As Ari kept her nose peeled down near the ground, I craned upwards, looking for a telltale paw slung over a deciduous branch. There were none that I could see. Even still, one thing was certain: for all the slinking and hunkering we were doing, we were not going unnoticed. As we know all too well, snowy tracks don’t lie.