#8 Trail Wood

Trail Wood #8.09 by Earl Plato

Trail Wood and the Fox
Teale continued his observing the trail of the fox. “ The feet of he fox have made part of the prints, the feet of a cottontail rabbit at rest. Although I search carefully I can find no bloodstains on the snow. The hunter in the night apparently went supperless in his maze near the edge of the pasture. Guided by sight or scent or sound or perhaps by memories the fox continued its quest for food. On its trail I push through a dense stand of dry goldenrod, cross the frozen lowland of Pussy Willow Corner. I accompany for a time little ice-covered Wet Weather Brook and climb up onto the wide cleared pathway of the lane. I expect the tracks will lead to the Fox’s Door, that rectangular opening in the wall beneath the mulberry tree. But they continue on to the little hollow where the evergreen ferns are massed. Here the wall, rising as high as my head above the depression presents the greatest obstacle. Yet it is precisely here that the fox mounts up and over the barrier. I see where it has made one bound part way up the bank and hen, in an almost vertical leap, a second bound that has carried it to the top of he snow-covered wall. Later I bring a steel tape to the spot and find he straight-up distance between the lower and upper footprints in the second leap is almost four feet!”