footprints

Last night a light dusting of snow covered just enough ground to record footprints, the visible signs that several different creatures were in the yard when we weren't looking. The squirrels' feet etch the ground with a curiously graceful print of tiny, tiny paws and spider-thin toes. Elsewhere, a cluster of three prints suggests rabbits, mostly up and around the apple trees. Who knows what the others are? Maybe foxes-- I've seen a mother and two kits making figure eights in the snow, and once a larger fox munching calmly on some cereal I'd thrown out for the birds. Raccoons are always disappearing down nearby storm drains and, occasionally, dismantling our garbage can.

For the dogs, the new snow lies atop the crusty remains of the existing snow, where their own footprints have worn grooves that now make walking a series of navigations. Their feet fall through the crust in one place, wobble along an established trail in another. In other words, it's no fun walking in the yard today. Pearl rushes for the ball, but quickly finds that running is even harder than walking.I throw the ball against the fence, but even the bounce is dulled as it lands with a thud in the hard--but not quite hard enough--snow. Pearl makes a game effort to find this barely bouncing ball challenging, but pretty quickly we both know that no real play is likely to be. . . afoot. In a desperate move, I throw the ball hard--right over the fence and into the alley, now inaccessible because I can't get out the side gate for the pile of snow on the other side. Pearl looks puzzled. "Let's take a break," I say, with a sigh of resignation.

Probably as well, though, because I don't want to occasion another sliced carpal pad like she got at Christmas while chasing a frisbee in icy snow. Just in the last couple of weeks the pad has finally closed up, the hair grown densely back. And just in the last week, she seems to be able to run indefinitely without suddenly stopping, dropping the ball, and looking at me. "Does your foot hurt?" I've learned ask. She holds it up: yes. Game over, we go inside.

So now, game over, we go inside, feet mercifully intact, making wet prints into the house and across the kitchen floor. Interminable winter.