Thursday, March 20, 2014

Mystery tracks

It's been raining a lot in the last couple of weeks; my weather center reports more than 9 inches of rain in the last 14 days.   When that much rain happens I walk the perimeter fence and river bank to see if anythings changed, and I was out with the dogs doing that when I spotted these tracks.
Mystery tracks
 The animal is pretty small; the stride is about 6" long.  These were the clearest tracks, and they don't show any webbing between the toes -- I thought at first it was a river otter, but now I'm leaning towards raccoon.  The tracks are always side-by-side, and they were on the edge of the field parallel to a small ditch.

The animal wasn't trying to hide; it was moving along about 10' away from any cover, so i'm going to guess it was at night.  During daylight the animals will tend to actually travel in the brushline.
coyote print for comparison found on same walk

I've never actually seen a possum track, and that's my second choice.

2 comments:

bhiggum said...

Pretty sure it's not a possum, they have a long thumb that hangs way out to the side. Definitely not a raccoon, the heel on the back foot isn't nearly pointy enough and the front foot looks even more like a hand.
They really look a lot like woodchuck tracks, but I'm not sure you'd have those in your area.

Jeff said...

I thought raccoon immediately. It looks like you only have pictures of the front feet prints. The back feet are more telling in identification.