Moose tracks in the snow!

I'm not a huge fan of cold and snow, but I do try to "bloom where I'm planted" and I'm an avid believer in getting outdoors and breathing fresh air. I'm one of those strange types that actually enjoy shoveling for the exercise and outdoors aspect, and take great pride in trimming up the edges and doing a nice job. I always make specific hills the kids can play on (they do help shovel, too) and every year, I help the kids build at least one fort and tunnel, sometimes more.

I try to appreciate the snow and now I have another reason - animal tracks! We have been aware of tracks for years and have often noticed bird tracks and the tell tale moose droppings, but I'm not sure we were ever able to put together a story quite like we did these past few days.

Last week we put up a bird feeder in the middle of the woods out back, so we could be sneaky in our bird watching, which was quite fruitful (we got a lot of action out there) until we went out Sunday and most of the bird seed was scattered all over the ground. The feeder was still hanging there, and we were left wondering for a minute until Ealom noticed some funky tracks in the snow. Apparently a moose had wandered along our forest path and thought the seeds might be tasty. We followed the tracks back towards the house and discovered that there were actually two trails next to each other with one being smaller - a mama and baby! How exciting! Well, yesterday we were coming back from our walk out to the feeder and noticed that the moose tracks went over toward the yard, which we hadn't noticed the day before. The boys were running all over the yard following where the mama had walked around the snow people and snow horses without stepping on them and they saw where she did her business. Then they found the baby tracks and saw that it had walked around their snow fort without stepping on it either (but Aidan was disappointed that it hadn't gone inside). :-) Then we followed the tracks out the other side of the yard and saw where baby did it's business. The boys were quite impressed with how small baby's little nuggets were compared to mama's.

We all found a new appreciation for the snow, as we would've missed so much of the story if the snow weren't there to help us.