The sky has been alternating from bright blue to overcast as scattered ranks of clouds move past from west to east.
I noticed squirrels out and about, the first I have noticed since the storm. I suppose they have been denned up, and are now a bit hungry and out looking for their stashes.
After lunch, I went down to the park for a walk. I followed deer tracks downstream along the south hillside. The snow was crusted just enough to support about 80 percent of my weight. As I stepped, it would almost hold me, and then as the last of my weight transferred onto the front foot, 'crunch,' and I would fall through a few inches into the softer snow beneath. Oh well, it's more exercise.
A half mile downstream is a wider, flat area, farther from the main trails. As I walked into the area, I heard wings flapping and turned to see a large bird flying up from the ground ahead to perch in a nearby tree branch. A turkey vulture. Then I saw a crow hopping on the snow. I walked over to see what they were feeding on, and found that it was a raccoon carcass. The vulture waited patiently for me to leave before continuing its recycling work.
As I walked back toward home, my mind picked out, from the stream of information coming in, something that seemed odd. That's how it works so often, ignoring what it sees as normal, and focusing on the unusual.
In this case, it was a piece of dead wood, a couple of inches in diameter, and about two feet long, suspended about head height, parallel to the ground. One end of the stick was resting on a thin branch, but what was holding it in place? Somehow, falling from the larger tree above, this stick had fallen in a way that one end was beneath one branch, and the other end atop a second branch, with just a little more weight on the supported end. I would have loved to have been there to witness that improbable fall - it must have come down at an angle, hit the fulcrum branch, and then flipped up to stick under the upper branch.
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