{"id":9315,"date":"2020-10-22T17:33:35","date_gmt":"2020-10-23T00:33:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/larryeifert.com\/?page_id=9315"},"modified":"2023-09-16T09:40:48","modified_gmt":"2023-09-16T16:40:48","slug":"2020-07-tracks-in-the-sand","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/larryeifert.com\/wordpress\/published-writings-and-art\/salish-sea-stories-48-north-magazine\/2020-07-tracks-in-the-sand\/","title":{"rendered":"2020 – 7 Tracks in the Sand"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Land your boat on a sandy beach and you\u2019ll probably soon see animal tracks in the sand. The most common are dog, bobcat, mountain lion, river otter and people. If you\u2019re lucky, it\u2019s a mix of all four. River otters remind me of an extremely hairy dachshund, same size (to 30 pounds and 3 to 4 feet including tail. Their fur is long and thick, keeping them warm swimming in our cold waters. The long and strong trail helps propel them like a sculling oar, but they are also at home on land and can run up to 15 miles an hour. I\u2019ve been cornered it a parking lot by an entire family of them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The tracks in the sand you see could very well be river otters, but not sea otters that rarely come ashore and aren\u2019t common in the Salish Sea anyway. Look for details. The hind feet show a single claw apart from the other four. Front feet show all five like a dog. All will show front claws and you might even see the connecting web between the toes. Dogs show claws, but not the separated hind toe. Cougars have huge prints like big dogs, but don\u2019t show claws. Bobcat track: only 1.5\u201d across and only four toes show. Here\u2019s the thing to remember. It matters little that you actually SAW the critter that made the track, because you saw proof it was here. I\u2019d say that\u2019s good enough.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Larry Eifert paints and sails the Pacific Northwest from Port Townsend. His large-scale murals can be seen in many national parks across America, and at larryeifert.com.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Land your boat on a sandy beach and you\u2019ll probably soon see animal tracks in the sand. The most common are dog, bobcat, mountain lion, river otter and people. If you\u2019re lucky, it\u2019s a mix of all four. River otters remind me of an extremely hairy dachshund, same size (to 30 pounds and 3 to … Continue reading 2020 – 7 Tracks in the Sand<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":11858,"parent":6453,"menu_order":22,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-9315","page","type-page","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/larryeifert.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/9315","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/larryeifert.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/larryeifert.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/larryeifert.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/larryeifert.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9315"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/larryeifert.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/9315\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11860,"href":"https:\/\/larryeifert.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/9315\/revisions\/11860"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/larryeifert.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/6453"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/larryeifert.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11858"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/larryeifert.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9315"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}