Yesterday I told you about Powler's Piece - the strange and rather creepy forest a couple of miles south of the village in which we live.Yesterday afternoon, while I was working on the new book by Carl Portman (more of which soon), Corinna, Shosh and Gavin took Biggles for an afternoon stroll.
They were in another part of the woods to that where they found the snow dryad on Friday, and they had been looking for footprints.
Amongst the myriad of deer, dogs and smaller creatures was this.
WTF? (as I am sure my younger stepdaughter, and probably Max would say)
I know that it looks like the single print of a cassowary, or maybe a small dinosaur, but it obviously isn't. But what is it?
It is the fact that it is a single imprint in the snow that intrigues me. It probably isn't even a footprint. My best guess is that it is what happens when a bird of prey momentarily lands to capture some poor hapless rodent, but that is only a guess.
It is over to you guys and I, for one, am hoping that it is a giant, one-legged snow cassowary. If it is, then I propose the name Casuarius corinna-and-bigglesi. C'mon boys and girls, don't let a fat cryptozoologist's dreams fail to come true (again).
In December 2007 a similar set of tracks appeared in British Columbia.
ReplyDeletehttp://ufos.about.com/od/currentuforeports/a/bcalientracks.htm
Maybe some sort of waterfowl (assuming of course the woods are anywhere near water)? That's about the only sort of bird I can think of large enough for this track.
Although it is odd that there was only one track. Never even thought of the "mark bird makes taking off" angle before.
Unless, of course, it's the Re-return of the Devil's Footprints.
Maybe it was a one night stand.
ReplyDeleteJersey Devil in your neck of the woods??? lol
ReplyDeleteI agree that it does look as if maybe something swooped down and picked up some prey.
I'm fairly sure that's not any sort of waterfowl. I recently photographed some Canada Goose tracks in snow, with my foot for scale: http://pic.atpic.com/1673773/600 - as you can see, they're big, but not *that* big...
ReplyDeleteSwan i guess would be bigger, perhaps approaching the width of that track, but not the length assuming the proportions are roughly similar to goose feet (which they look from the swans and geese i've seen). Also the outline of the webbing is very clear.
As there's only one track, i suspect it's a coincidence result of several smaller tracks (could be dog or other mammal rather than bird) overlapping each other and then further snow falling to blur out the details and make it look like one big track. It is strikingly like a ratite track though - a good simulacrum...