newjerseynewsroom.com

BY VIOLET SNOW

NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM

NATURAL WONDERS OF NEW JERSEY

On a sunny morning, I head across the recently renewed snow cover to see what the creatures have been up to in the little nature preserve behind my house. I follow deer tracks to a spot where they've pawed up the snow down to the leaves and even some dirt, looking perhaps for acorns.

The many trails crisscross, knotting together under a loose thicket of bare-branched shrubs, where I find several piles of deer scat. Alongside the thicket is a patch of broadleaf evergreen shrub. Were they here to dine? But I don't see twigs of the evergreen nipped off.

Ah, but beneath the bare twigs is a roughly triangular depression in the snow, shaped like a deer with its legs folded up and its head curved around to rest on its knees. Two more lays are in evidence a few feet away. While the thicket doesn't look like a lot of protection, maybe its deer-colored twigs add an element of camouflage.

I'm thinking about the fact that I always see lots of cloven tracks here but almost never see actual deer, except from inside the house. It could be that I even frightened deer from these very lays a few minutes ago – the tracks look pretty fresh. I'm not making any effort to be quiet, a difficult challenge in this crunchy snow.

Suddenly I recall something I learned from a tracking teacher about "soft-focus eyes" or "splatter vision" – the act of slightly unfocusing the eyes to take in more peripheral vision rather than concentrating on a spot directly in front. Although I learned this technique years ago, I have totally forgotten about it and virtually never use it. Well, I think, it's worth a try.

I cast my gaze across the woods and turn my head, letting my eyes soften. Immediately – I mean, within one second – I see a flicker of brown against brown, far off among the trees. It disappears. I keep looking at the area, continuing to soften my vision, and after a few moments, portions of several deer appear, shifting uneasily, white tails wavering. There's a road nearby, and I don't want to flush them out into traffic, so I retreat, hoarding my recovered skill like a delightful little surprise.

I head over to a den hole I discovered last year, where I detect a bit of recent activity. Dirt from inside the hole is scattered over footprints leading away. The tracks are too small for a fox – my tape measure says one inch wide and a bit longer. The prints are blurred from yesterday's thaw and the uneven terrain, so I can't make out much detail.

From the snow, I pluck a wavy black hair. A few feet away on the ridge trail is a small, gooey scat. I poke at it with a stick, and a skunklike scent rises up. I'm not going to say definitively that this creature was a skunk, but the odds are pretty good.

Violet Snow's website: violetsnow.webs.com; blog: violetsnow77.wordpress.com/; Twitter: visnow; Videos on Youtube: http://tinyurl.com/nhqsc8