1.19.15 It is 37 degrees, not 12 or 9 or 0, as the world drips and melts a bit.

It is 37 degrees, not 12 or 9 or 0, as the world drips and melts a bit. The roads a bit dangerously icy; our sheet of ice driveway now sanded and brown. the skies are breathtaking, blue and aquamarine spots sweeping through, to be followed quickly by grey and dark, so that I imagine we shall see no moon once again tonight. 

There is one tiny coyote cub coming to the compost, the tracks of the previous night visible each morning.
All the years we have been here there is a large male and medium female, with one or two cubs, and maybe a yearling, coming by in the night to check things out. In warmer winter nights they check but demur. When the desperate times begin in February, they will eat just about anything.
This small one is the only one who comes this year. I am thinking of the several days and one night when there were so many gunshots like a ill-winded staccato through the land.

Wondering if the young guy next door and his friends finally landed themselves some coyote. Who knows. 

But the one traveling up here by themselves is very unusual; always the young pups have traveled about with the parents, til a bit older.
This lone one does, of course, have quite the interest in the one surviving Possum, following the small fingered tracks hopefully, but without luck. 

One night I trudged out to empty the compost bucket, and met up with the teenaged Possum, so silver and shining and shy and beautiful. 

You know, life is what it is, whether we like it or not.
In the meantime, the world turns and the inhabitants of this planet keep on in their ways, and we relish another day.