Tracks

So we got snow over the weekend. Over 7 inches the first wave, and I lost track after that, due to some rain and melting, and, frankly, lack of caring to head out to clear any and start fresh when I didn't have to.

Yesterday, I'd had to. We'd had a family birthday party postponed due to weather, and we couldn't disappoint a 4-year-old. Especially since we hadn't met him yet, nor his 5 week old brother! So packages got shopped for a week before the party date got changed, wrapped yesterday morning, finally, and taken out to the car just a "little" bit ahead of leaving. 

I had to clear a whole lot of snow and ice off the car before taking off. We don't have a winter snow brush, not after 12 winters in the Phoenix area, just a scraper with a short handle, and one side rubber and the  other hard plastic. It's good for the little stuff that doesn't require a long reach, like rain and dust. Otherwise there's a broom, no longer the smooth bristled version of itself when we bought it. Especially after yesterday.

It was during a pause in pushing the broom across the car roof when I saw them. First there were rabbit tracks. Huge ones. Must be that escaped semi-tame one I'd seen a few days earlier, huge, fat, and splotches of brown and white fur. Behind those tracks were deer tracks. Apparently they're still not afraid of heading into town despite two full blocks of houses on this end of it after 30-some years, at least at night when we are sleeping. 

Looking a bit further down the driveway, there were large dog tracks. Since none were widely spaced, I am guessing each came through at its own individual time. Nothing looked like a wild chase. Finally there were small splayed toe tracks with a thin tail print behind them. I'm guessing large mouse or small rat. Other rodents around here, chipmunks and squirrels, have bushy tails.

This morning we had more errands to run early. Fresh tracks greeted us without erasing the old ones in the snow. Two sizes of birds had checked out the driveway before I'd headed out to start the car. I'm guessing one set was robin tracks, if only because I'd seen and gotten photos of them at different times in the driveway, picking up the tiny apples from the Pink Spires Crabapple overhanging it and busy dropping fruit now before its next flowering. I do love the way those start deep pink and over the course of a couple weeks get paler and paler until they are almost white when the petals drop. It's nice to see the birds love them too, now that the highbush cranberries are no longer bearing and bringing them to the yard. I've cut them back to get rid of dead wood in hope of their coming back from their bases. 

But looking at this morning's tracks, I have no idea whether the robins had left the larger or smaller of the two sets of tracks, nor what bird made the others. Once back from our errands, enough melting had happened from the strengthening sunlight that almost no tracks at all remained except our own.