Sunday, March 15, 2009
AIEE! The Devil!
I'm being naughty, posting a video of this sort. But it is the weekend, and this blog strays from current events at least once a week.
I've loved the story of the "Devil's footprints" in Devon ever since I first read about it when I was seven. It has happened again, and now we have video.
No, I don't think it was the Devil. Maybe a rabbit? But that theory does not explain why the tracks stop and start so oddly... (Thanks, as always, to the Perfesser..)
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8 comments:
Looks to me like pine marten- a weasel. They scamper up trees (note the woman's bird feeder on a post where some tracks lead).
Photos of pine marten tracks in snow: http://www.flickr.com/photos/bacherfamily/492095740/
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Martes.martes.tracks.on.snow.jpg
Interestingly, the Unabomber, in his writings, talks about the same phenomenon. He would be chasing a rabbit that he wanted to kill and eat and the tracks would simply disappear.
He developed a spirituality around this. He decided there was a grandfather rabbit who saved rabbits and who allowed him to eat rabbits. So when he would catch a rabbit, he would thank the grandfaater rabbit before he ate it. When he didn't catch a rabbit, he would know that grandfather rabbit felt the bunny needed to live.
Weasels are common in Britain, and here is perhaps an answer to "why the tracks stop and start so oddly":
Widespread throughout Britain, weasels are our smallest and probably most numerous carnivores... found in a wide range of habitats which include urban areas, lowland pasture and woodland, marshes and moors... The weasel's small size enables it to search through tunnels and runways of mice and voles. Access to tunnels means weasels can hunt at any time of the day or year. They do not hibernate and can hunt even under deep snow.
More weasel tracks in the snow. http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_oXJdtQhxnyQ/SZSlXADb1NI/AAAAAAAAA80/nAiF7NlgMx4/s320/Shorttailed+Weasel.2.12.09+%283%29.JPG
I encountered a somewhat similar phenomenon in new-fallen snow perhaps one inch thick: what were definitely rabbit tracks ran alongside a guard railing, went directly under it (parallel in the vertical plane), led up to one of the support posts...then the left and right prints diverged around the post before merging on the other side, as if the rabbit's body had been able to pass through the post(!) I have since referred to it as "The Quantum Tunneling Rabbit." :)
Sergei Rostov
Danny Torrance killed his dad with that trick.
living in a northern European country I have seen that phenomenon quite often. The rabbit or the hare use to take a LATERAL jump into nearby brush making thus the track disappear and more difficult to follow. This habit is specially common when they get closer to their hole, because they don't want to display the location. Many "unexplicable" phenomenon have a rational explanation. The great botanist Linné firmly believed that swallows were spending the winter at the bottom of lakes ! This is because at fall before migration huge swarms of swallows gather in the vegetation belts around some lakes. They make a lot of noise but all of a sudden, when the last sunbeam disappears they suddenly get quiet and disappear into the weeds. The morning after at the dusk of dawn they immediately fly away to Africa raising rapidly to high altitude where at that time they couldn't be observed. Of course the accidental presence of the remains of a drowned swallow, found in a fisherman's net before the ice covers the lake, was support for the "theory".
And of course a bunch of guys still don't have any explanation why their wife seems to "disappear" now and then and come home later with a big smile on her face...
Sergei~ I'm pretty sure the tracks you saw were of two one-legged rabbits traveling together.
Anon -
The portion of the rail in question had 3-ft spaces on either side: on the right was another railing, on the left a drop off of several feet into a ditch (it was a u-shaped double rail enclosing a walkway whose sides bracketed a river, and whose bottom was on the edge of the street, the tracks diverged midway down one arm of the "u", at which point there was a long perperdicular ditch, the one just mentioned). I spent several minutes investigating the scene, and nowhere off to either side were there any tracks at all. Also, the forward set was straight on, not far enough away from the post, and I neglected to say it was a pair of front prints followed by a pair of front prints. (Everyone knows what I mean by "post" in this case? A lower-case-l-shaped piece of corrugated metal stuck into the ground). Assume it could fit its body under the rail duringthe whole move while it (its body) was extended. Ok, so to do that with lateral movement it would have had to have made a sort-of "C" in the air (in a plane tilted off the horizontal towards the post) to make the forward set, (possibly needing to) slide its body along the post. That's some cool shredding. :)
ellie - :) I also thought about two rabbits of the same size following each others' footsteps, but separating and lifting their inside legs at the divergence point. :) And one rabbit backing up to that point (lifting its hind legs in the air at the end), another getting to that point and backing up. :)
But I like the idea of the Quantun Tunneling Rabbit - rabbit-as-Flash, or rabbit-as-Kitty-Pryde/Shadowcat - better :)
Sergei Rostov
p.s.
Anon -
"How do you know so much about swallows?"
"Well, you have to know these things when you're a king, you know."
:)
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