7:13 a.m. 28 degrees (34 degrees warmer than last Saturday), wind NE 2 mph. Sky: closed-off by October-like fog, the byproduct of warm air on snow. Permanent streams: upper, dark, fish-shaped openings engraved in deep snow, salmon or rays . . . possible a molly. All openings are loquacious. Lower, between road and marsh, still closed, still silent. Above the road, emerging holes birth music. Wetlands: across the marsh, the evergreen wall reduced to a suggestion in the mist—vague outlines. No depth. Red crossbills are indifferent. A suggestion is quite enough. Over the marsh, ebullient chatting; a conversation in triplets: gyp, gyp, gyp. Pitch into tree crowns, wrestle with cones. Pond: deer spoor across the surface, crisscrosses, bows, and loops as if unspooled. Weasel tracks, paired footprints seven or eight inches apart, small feet (maybe a short-tailed weasel, an ermine white as snow), along the berm, up the bank, and into a snow tunnel. An inch wide portal in another world. Subnivian tunnels, a northern lifeline, particularly for small mammals. Darker, warmer, more humid. Where mice and squirrels convene.
Road wanderings: deer down the middle, along both sides, back and forth. Red-backed voles on and off the banks, prints like stitches, twisting everywhere, including knots of footprints—the work of a drunk tailor or surgeon. White-footed mice footprints are also clusters of four, but the long tail drags down each set's middle—the work of an aimless sewing machine.
Bobcat came out of the marsh, walked along the road. Neat round prints, almost but not quite in a straight line. Four oblong toe pads in front of a tri-lobed heel pad. No claws register. Maybe, the cat that pulled the goshawk chicks out of their pine nest last June, or stole my homebody cat, Roberto, later in the month. A wandering warrior in search of a meal.
Two turkeys under the feeders. Scratching for sunflower seeds. Bobcat should come to my front yard, hide by the feeders, under the Adirondack chairs . . . and wait for turkeys. Pounce. A breakfast of dark meat, what my nana called polkes, richly oxygenated, well-developed thighs. Turkeys walk everywhere—except when flying to roost. Squadrons march up and down the valley. Often single-file like the Seven Dwarfs (without all the hi hoing). Propelled hardy drumsticks fit for Christmas dinner.