One of God's little creatures crawled out from the basement of the house next door, walked under our back stairs and over to the barn, and back again and left a really interesting trail. Can anyone guess what it is? We've seen an animal that looks sort of like a big gopher or beaver but with a small tail and big back haunches. I've thought it was a marmot, but the local residents don't think we have marmots around here, and the New Hampshire wildlife website doesn't mention them. Do these tracks identify this fellow? Click the images for a better look.
This photo shows that porcupine tracks in the snow look pretty much like this, so maybe that's what it is: http://tinyurl.com/porcupine-tracks
This is a photo of blueberry hill about 5 miles away:
First light snow on trees in our back yard
Two of my dear sisters have made suggestions. One of them has very helpfully suggested that the tracks might be from a "wayward platypus" and the other added, "walking ass backwards."
ReplyDeleteThe other suggestion was that it's a woodchuck, and I'm pretty sure that's right.
http://www.northrup.org/photos/woodchuck/
Plus, this shows that I'm right--it's a marmot. My neighbors scrunch up their eyebrows when I say, "I think we have a marmot," and they say, "Maybe a woodchuck." Turns out that a woodchuck *is* a marmot. Well, there ya go.