Sunrise hidden by a layer of cloud. A white-footed mouse explores the corrugated roof over my oil tanks, its likely sickness shown by its lack of fear.
white-footed mouse
Below freezing. A few snowflakes swirl past. Inside, the resident mouse dashes from errand to errand, unaware that this is a day of rest.
A tangle of tracks in the yard: rabbit, cat, squirrel, mouse… I’m not picturing a children’s book, but each creature fearful and alone.
White above and below. But looking more closely, I see the tracks of mice forced to leave the house to forage for weed seeds in the garden.
The no-longer-drifting snow records moonlit revels: where a vole broke cover, where white-footed mice foraged, where rabbits danced.
In the bitter night, a white-footed mouse bounded unerringly from the corner of the wall to a hole 20 feet away. The snow is my newspaper.