MOTHER NATURE'S ICE SHOW

When the dogs and I took a different route--this time along the brook--I wondered that Mother Nature wasn't asked to contribute to those ice carving festivals of where we often see photos being emailed about. I thought these good examples, just taken from Cranberry Run... a small obscure creek. I'm sure this is just a fraction of the marvelous works she may produce each year with her freezing and the melting technique she'd rather use than a chisel. If you know who's in charge, please ask them to have Her contribute next year.


Hippo Melting into His Water World


Nature's Crystal Flutes


Dolphins' Struggle

WILD PAWPRINTS IN THE SNOW:




ON my second cross country ski-walk yesterday, I was to check out some paw prints on the Lake which truly resembled mountain lion's from what I'd seen in some book on hunting. I had brought my camera, a measuring tape, and not the dogs on the second trip, and followed backwards those paw prints to a wharf where the beast had gone under... almost proving to me it must have been a large crouching cat. I got on my hands and knees and went under to get a closer look only to find claw marks at the tips of each toe... not a cat-like print. As I'm scooting back out from under, I'm thinking, 'it may be that the cat had to get some purchase on the ice, as otherwise the prints appeared clawless.' I studied them on the way back to where I had first seen them when with the dogs, and didn't want them to step all over them before I got a picture and wanted to have measurements, so I had also taken a tape measure, and was placing it in the snow, when I had a feeling something was watching me, or caught a movement from the corner of my eye, and looked up to see a large dog that resembled a pit-bull/husky combination with a vest to keep him warm(?) ... probably belonged to the ice-fishing group across from where I stood. It was approaching me cautiously, and when I went to take a picture of him, he decided I wasn't anything interesting and ambled away. I looked at his tracks in the snow... large even for his size dog, and they seemed to match the prints I was photographing. [Those prints I initially had seen probably had the nails disappear with with blowing snow. He was the culprit. ...I think.... No panther/mountain lion/ puma... just a dog. I puzzled after as to why I was so excited, and wanted so much to prove that, yes, indeed, all the local rural myths were right... there really are mountain lions in the area. IF this was proved, it would cause such a commotion. If I proved it with paw prints that were provably so, I couldn't let the public know it was found on Cranberry lake, nor could I reasonably publish the fact at all without causing such alarm that we'd probably have a posse of hunters 'out to get him.'