Bill at Home

There are about 2 inches of snow blanketing the farm. Not enough to cover everything, but enough to give contrast to something out of place. Looking out the kitchen window toward the creek, and over the rim of my 2nd cup of coffee, the motion caught my attention first. Large and black moving north along the cross fence my first thought was "deer". But the loping gate was all wrong and so I settled on "coyote". Through 60 year old eyes (OK, 62 but who's counting) 300 yards calls for assistance, so I grabbed for the Bushnells for a closer look. Yep there he, or she, was out for breakfast. I struggled a bit for better focus on the unfamiliar optics, and I thought I was seeing double for a tick. But yes there were two! Working in tandem they scouted an acre or so, stopping to sniff and look, then loping along again. Claudia and I watched them for a minute or two. Trading back and forth with the binoculars, spotting for each other. "Look more to the left." "The other one is almost to the creek!" It was amazing and somehow peaceful to watch them calmly go about their work. And then as quickly as they came, they disappeard into the undergrowth along Saline creek.

Yesterday afternoon Claudia and I bundled up and took a hike down by the creek. OK, actually we fired up the Gator. But hey, it was 15 degrees and the machinery needs to be exercized too! We saw lots of tracks. I regretted my loss of expertise at identifying them. Some skills degenerate after years of "city life". Deer, dogs, birds, vole tunnels under the snow, were evident but I commented on how few rabbit tracks. Perhaps some of those "dogs tracks" were actually from my morning visitors. As to the low rabbit population, maybe that's the result of many more successful morning jogs by these two beauties.