Who Goes There?

Day 129: Ah, what a story my yard tells, particularly beneath the bird feeders and on the sidewalk leading to my kitchen door! A fresh dusting of snow last night provided the page on which jays, juncos, towhees, thrushes and a rambling raccoon signed in as guests, their activities criss-crossing so densely that in places, the evidence of their comings and goings became too jumbled to read. Rocky tends to follow a regular beat: enters the yard beneath the crow board, checks for goodies beneath it (a hodgepodge of overlaid tracks), then follows my well-trodden rut through the snow to the clearer sidewalk, there to access the ground beneath the seed trays. I suspect he's making his second stop of the night, the first having been Clyde's back porch where the pickings are somewhat better. Then, ever hopeful that some circumstance has changed in the previous 24 hours, he investigates my recycling bin, the empty cat food cans deliciously odorous but securely out of reach. He exits the yard toward the road, a trench left in the remaining foot of snow showing evidence of repeated passage. The birds, on the other hand, are mostly hoppers, clear imprints of paired feet at regular intervals except for the towhees who give a backward hop to bring scattered seed to the surface. The record of my visitors' pursuits is as interesting to read as a good mystery or spy story: Who goes there, in the dark of night, and with what agenda?