Following the Sliding Otter

Sometimes the best laid plans can be waylaid by the weather.  I had taken the day off, as had my husband, so that we could go skiing with our friend, Betsey.   But the weather turned warm, too warm, and the day was much too foggy for any kind of decent skiing.  So, what to do with a free day, even though the weather is less than ideal?  Well, there is no bad weather, only bad clothing for the weather, so I took advantage of the free day to join my fine all-weather friend, Al, to track an otter whose slides he had found just down the road from his house.  

I had to chuckle when I saw the slide and what Al had carved in the snow next to the track: "OTTER" with an arrow pointed to the slide.  Always the teacher, he wanted to make sure that any passers-by would know what they were looking at if they wondered.

But what a slide!  This otter was determined to take the easy way at every opportunity, even travelling uphill.  Al had followed the trail from the road, through the cemetery and the woods, down to Center Pond, encountering mink tracks along the way.  Most of the time, the otter had traveled on its belly.  Since Al had followed the tracks in one direction, we backtracked the otter from Cemetery Road to wherever it started its sliding journey.   Through the field, into the woods, across Nelson Road, down the stream and into the marsh, where a pattern emerged: three or four steps, then a slide, three steps, slide, four steps, slide. On level ground or should I say, ice, the otter couldn't sustain a long slide, but had to give itself a little help.

I had noticed, as Al and I were walking along the Nelson Road another time, a large mound in the marsh.  It looked like a boulder, but at the time, the water was not frozen enough to bear our weight, so we couldn't check it out.  But today, here we were, in the middle of the marsh, just steps away, so we detoured away from the otter trail to check out the mound.  It wasn't big enough to be a beaver lodge, but it was a nice size for a muskrat lodge.  Sure enough, it was not a boulder, but a muskrat lodge, built with mud, moss, cattails leaves, and other wetlands vegetation.   Very different composition from a beaver lodge, but durable enough to provide shelter from the elements.

Sliding through the cemetery (the dark line is a vole tunnel)

Muskrat Lodge--Al provides a size perspective.  It was about  2 feet tall.  

The Lichen man.  Or that's what we call it. 

Otter scat and urine.   

Here's a mystery--who put these steps in this beech tree?  There are only about 5 steps and  no other evidence of  a deer  stand or steps that had been removed higher up in the tree.  This tree is located close to the ball field behind the Babe Ruth field backstop.   Anyone know anything about it?  

Lichen with orange stocks.  Can anyone identify this type of lichen?

Having confirmed my suspicions on the mysterious mound, we returned to the otter tracks. Over beaver dams, around and over open water, we found it harder and harder to follow the trail.  But eventually, we found a spot where the otter had come up on a bank and deposited scat and urine.  Usually, otter scat has fish scales, but this scat did not.  We hypothesized that the otter might have eaten a frog, a nice easy meal this time of year since frogs hibernate in the winter.  After we found the scat, we pretty much lost the trail, but we kept going.  Along the way, we found a few cranberries, which we enjoyed and some old mink tracks, but the otter trail had gone cold.   No matter,  it had still been an enjoyable adventure.   A satisfying way to spend a foggy January morning, topped off with our usual cups hot cocoa and Al's delicious gypsy soup.