Game Trails

 

Possum, Bobcat, Armadillo, Coyote, Deer, Skunk, Fox, Feral Hog, Feral greg, Rabbit, Racoon, Squirrel, not to mention a variety of smaller rodents, turtles, snakes, lizards, and a good selection of birds, large to small, and more insects than can fit in all the Home Depot buckets in stock! (It's estimated that there's about 2.5 million ants for every one of the 8 billion humans on the planet)

It's safe to say that we have some wildlife here on the property. In fact, the two of us wingless two-leggers are way outnumbered here!

So it's not surprising that I come across fresh dens quite often (see how orange the dirt at the arrows is. It hasn't had time to weather to a more faded color yet). And sometimes quite close to the trails I've cut that weave through the property.

But because I do the bare minimum of trail-maintenance

it can be difficult to distinguish my trails from the many game trails out there. Here, my trail veers off to the right, under the green arrow, which is more difficult to see than I anticipated, while a game-trail continues nearly straight under the red arrow.

Here's an example where the game-trail (red) is significantly more pronounced than my trail (green), even though I have boots on my trails 6 to 8 times per week.

Is it any wonder that I sometimes wander off along a game trail instead of sticking to my lane when I'm not paying attention?

Not all game-trails are easy to spot. This one, just off the toe of my boot, is called a foraging-trail,

as is this one snaking past my hat, visible right now because of the low angle of the light.

These are made by tens of thousands of leaf-cutter ant-feet following the same route between nest and foraging area and back for weeks at a time. In the case of the boot trail they were collecting Juniper berries from further up the hill and taking them back to the nest, which is about 100 feet from this spot. The Juniper berries have pretty much all been collected, but if you blow the image up you might be able to spot a stray ant or two still using this trail.

Most of the property is too hard and gravely to show many footprints,

but there are a couple sandy spots where tracks, from boot, bike, deer, feline, canine, rodent, reptile, insect, and bird, show up fairly well. In this case

when I got down on hands and knees

I counted over a dozen

different kinds of tracks in this one small area,

including that of a fire-breathing dragon!

OK, maybe just an ordinary dragon.

OK, OK, perhaps just a lizard. But then again, lizards are dragons!

(Is it just me, or does anybody else see a perfect little horseshoe in the side of that deer print?)

Anyway - off to get lost on my trails again.