A mystery!

Yesterday morning I was putting out bird seed at dawn, well not quite dawn, and I noticed an odd set of tracks - huge foot prints with a line between them in the snow.

These tracks seemed to go everywhere around the property.... What on earth?

A bigger foot print than from my two pups...and what was this line between the paw prints. Logic was not about to check in without more coffee.

Mulling this over, a friend of mine had told me that she'd seen a fisher nearby this property. Could it be that - the line being the long tail dragging in the snow?

Or could it be a bobcat but what about the line, bobcats have virtually no tails, a cougar? No that was too far fetched. I got out my camera a bit later and took some photos to compare with shots on the computer's ever trusty google search.

Kept the cats in. Walked with the dogs, but was always nearby.

By mid-afternoon, (lots more coffee) I figured it out, and confirmed it last night when I woke and looked out the window around 10 o'clock, the slim moon barely lighting the snowy yard.

A huge dog dragging it's leash... Racing across the snow in my back yard was a very large collie.

And I remembered that neighbours had asked me when I first moved here if I'd seen the collie. There is also a very large black and white Newfoundland cross, but I don't think it's ever allowed off its leash.

Had the collie broken away from its owner? There were certainly drag marks everywhere indicating it was running free. And no foot prints in the afternoon when I took the dogs down to the mail box.

So whatever happened to the pup, it seems to drop by only at night - maybe chasing the tiny bunnies that leave their tracks for me to see in early morning... so tiny and so sweet.

Hopefully this dog isn't a runaway... but I'll watch in the future. In the meantime, it's another snowy day today, unlike yesterday with its beautiful glowing sunrise.

May all who are suffering because of the weather find some comfort today and power outages be limited and repaired quickly. And may any mysteries in your day be quickly solved as well - with as much laughter as mine contains.