A friend is here with me in Maine---she's a Harvard professor, working on a paper due Feb 1st. Her dog came with her; and while the  dogs play and hang out together, she works on her laptop in one room and  I on my laptop in another.  Then we get together for dinner. A good workable system.

Yesterday afternoon she took a break and went out on snowshoes. When she came back, she brought with her a chunk of top-layer snow that she had broken off behind my barn in order to show me the animal  tracks on it.

Here's a photo:

 and one more:

We googled "animal tracks"---she was guessing porcupine (which I dreaded, because Alfie has already tangled with a porcupine once and I never want to go through that again) ....but these tracks are not remotely close to porcupine or raccoon or fox or skunk or any of the small critters usually around here.  It most closely matches coyote or bobcat.

I did see a coyote in our meadow a couple of summers ago. So perhaps he is still around.

The visiting dog, a German Shepherd named Sophie, stays near the house, comes when called, and is a little timid. Alfie on the other hand, dashes off to nose around the base of the barn (this is where he met his porcupine fate) and won't come away until he is good and ready. Timid? Not really. Curious, gregarious,  and eager.

So I have become somewhat nervous about the late night pee-before-bed.  In summer I can take him out on a leash at night.  But not with ice and snow everywhere. 

I mentioned in a previous post that I had once taken a photo of Alfie with a mouse. It demonstrates his interest in wildlife: 

I just hope he isn't similarly curious about a coyote or a bobcat. 

I  had thought the phrase "Nature, red in tooth and claw" was Shakespeare but I just checked and I was wrong---it's Tennyson. Oh dear, I'm sorry I even remembered it at all.