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Wildlife Spotting

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46.3738, -95.6262

Field Notes

Description:

Tracks of an unknown animal left on a dirt road

Habitat:

A quiet dirt road running between farm fields

Notes:

I was curious about these track left on the dirt road and wondered at its weird, meandering trail. A mouse or some other rodent, perhaps?

Species ID Suggestions

Comments (4)
JanelleL.Streed
CindyBinghamKeiser-Perhaps not a tail. I may be simply seeing the space left between the pushed up areas of dirt left by its feet...? We do have Muskrat here but there are no lakes, pounds or sloughs in this area. The closest may be miles away and the individual tracks were more the size of a woman's thumb pad. Shoot. Kicking myself now for not keeping a ruler in my car or grabbing something else I could have set beside it for size comparison
CindyBinghamKeiser
Hmmm, well I do know that Muskrat can drag its tail and meander around but the tracks look too small and I'm unable to see the shape. Hopefully someone more knowledgeable of your local critters can help!
JanelleL.Streed
CindyBinghamKeiser-Grrr I didn't take any measurements. Sorry about that however, you can just make out the width of a vehicle's tire track in the first image...does that help? I could move it to "mammal" though as I do believe it was a mammal that left this...perhaps something with a tail it was dragging behind it...
CindyBinghamKeiser
Hi Janelle, this is an interesting spotting! The width of the tracks and length of each "foot" track would help a lot. Once it's identified, you can change the category of the track owner :)

Spotted for Missions

Mission
Minnesota Wildlife (Animals)
Mission
Critters of the Midwest

Tags

Photographed
PublishedFebruary 16, 2014

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