Tracking fun! See if you can guess it.

[urbpan]

On Monday I was told about some "really big tracks" that I needed to investigate. I was skeptical, figuring people were getting excited over fox or raccoon tracks. You can see my size nine mucking boot in the photo, so these were pretty decent sized tracks--bigger than fox or raccoon. In fact, I described them as "coyote-sized" (eastern coyote, or coywolf, a bigger animal than the western coyote) or about 3.5 inches by 2.5 inches. This is a 3 by 4 lope, meaning that one foot of the animal went into a footprint it already left, making it look like 3 tracks instead of 4. This is indicative of a certain family of carnivores.


Here's a track compared to my little hand wrapped in a lady's glove. You can see the impression of the fifth digit pad of the animal, eliminating the cat and dog families from the identification.


Get it yet?


These tracks were left by a fisher Martes pennanti, the biggest member of the weasel family still found in the east (we used to have wolverines but they were extirpated). The fisher (a misnomer--the animal is not much of a fish-eater, preferring small to medium mammals, including porcupines and raccoons) has increased in numbers in urban areas in recent years, causing some conflict with people concerned for pets. Despite being relatively small, ten to fifteen pounds for a large male, fisher can easily prey on cats and small dogs.