After the storm

[lavenderbard]

I was supposed to go to a song circle on Saturday, but it was cancelled due to bad weather. Sunday I went out view the post-storm scenery. I am accustomed to ice storms that encase twigs in a cocoon of ice, making it look a bit as if the trees were made out of icicles. This was different. The ice was not continuous, but clung (mostly to the upper branches) in spots or chains. It made it seem like the trees had been hung with crystals, rather as if some over-energetic fairy children had been enthusiastically decorating for some winter festival.

It was also a good day for viewing animal tracks. All the usual suspects were represented, deer, feral cats, rabbits, and squirrels. I saw several trails of teeny-tiny footprints, clearly left by a critter of mouse size or smaller. And also dog prints… although stray dogs are rarer than stray cats in this neighborhood, so maybe they were actually fox tracks. I know we have foxes in the area. There were also some messy tracks I couldn’t make out well enough enough to identify the owner. Skunk maybe? Or raccoon?