Monday, 8:00 AM. 11 degrees, wind W, calm at ground level. The sky is overcast except for a diminishing band of orange sky on the eastern horizon, evidence of the slow advance of moisture laden clouds from the west over the entire dome of the sky . The barometer predicts snow.
Yesterday afternoon, since it was so nice, Lucky and I took a walk through the in-town woods trail. We hadn’t been on it for a long time because of the deep snow, but with all the thawing the snow was crusty, and as long as I didn’t step off the few tracks left by another walker it was manageable. We hadn’t proceeded very far before I spotted an object just off the path. It was a small animal, about five inches long, including its short tail.
It was mostly grayish black with a lighter underside, pink feet, and a flat, pink, somewhat star-shaped nose. It was a star-nosed mole, a very small mammal that looks like a rodent but has its own classification, an insectivore. It is native to damp soils of far northern Wisconsin, and I would imagine seldom seen, as its principal habitat is subterranean. It had evidently emerged, perhaps because its tunnels were flooded by the recent thaw, and been done in by a predator. It was possibly a hawk or owl that found its taste not to its liking. There were no signs of a struggle and only one faint drop of blood on the white, frozen snow, so it indeed may have been dropped by a bird in flight. I have seen moles scurry across the ground on occasion, but this was the first time I had examined one closely. They are prodigious diggers, able to proceed rapidly enough through the soil to catch worms and soil dwelling insects. Dwelling mostly under the ground, they have little need of vision, and so are virtually sightless, from which the old adage “blind as a mole” is derived. They are interesting little creatures, exemplifying the astounding variety of evolutionary adaptations in living things. Although murdered by some unsympathetic predator, its life and death served the useful purpose of allowing us to examine in closely. Ce’ est la vie!
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