Snow tracks animals' hunt for food
Sunday, March 3, 2002

Tracks in the snow tell fascinating stories of the secret lives of the wild animals that are out and about in the winter. Animals' search for food is never-ending.

Walking through the woods, we came upon the trail of a red fox. The footprints of a fox are more pointed than those of a dog, more nearly in a straight line, and the hind foot is placed exactly on the print of the corresponding front foot. This fox had walked out across a field to a big ant hill and sat on top of it to listen and test the wind for scent. A dog will not do that. Later, back in the woods, he had jumped on a fallen tree and trotted along its length. A dog will not do that either.

The fox was travelling leisurely, pausing here and there to sniff at tufts of grass and other possible hiding places for mice.

Then he had broken into a leaping run. A rabbit, crouched in a hollow of a stump, had dashed out, darted through a thick tangle of small hawthorns and choke cherries, and into a hollow log. The fox, forced to circle the thicket, got there too late.

In the woods adjacent to a big marsh, were the tracks of two mink. They had emerged from openings into muskrat tunnels that honeycomb the shore. The mink's footprint, in snow, is shaped much like that of a human foot. A good tracker can determine male from female and age by looking at a minks track!

Mink eat muskrats but they also search for fish, crayfish, mice and squirrels. This pair hunting separately, had combed the woods nosing into every patch of briars, every stump, every hollow tree, every mouse hole.

All through the woods, too, were the tracks of squirrels and rabbits. The squirrels had hopped along from tree to tree swerving to dig up acorns they could smell, hidden beneath the snow. We came upon the tracks of another fox, travelling in long leaps. It had seen a squirrel venturing just a little too far from any tree. The two tracks merged.

Only the fox tracks went on.