Hasty Decisions

Muskrats have four toes. Badgers and weasels are mustelids with five toes pointing forward. It's a raccoon, with four toes forward and one 'thumb.'

I should have specified why I didn't even consider raccoon. Simply because they don't live here! They are not native and we don't have a recorded invasive population in the area where this was photographed which also does not have the ecosystem that supports raccoons (wrong kind of trees), which made it easy to eliminate that possibility. It is, however, prime muskrat habitat. Muskrats do have 5 toes on all their feet, but most often the fifth digit is only visible on the tracks of the back feet due to size and positioning. While they're less often seen in the winter, they'll pop up during bouts of warmer weather, which we were actively experiencing at the time. Beavers are more active in the winter relative to muskrats, but I ruled beaver out for several reasons. https://www.hww.ca/en/wildlife/mammals/muskrat.html

My dad died a few days ago. I thought I'd saved that post someone made that was a list of things like accounts and shit to deal with when someone dies (because it turns out no one just hands you a list). Anyway. I didn't find it. Found this. This works. Dad was a geologist. Now he's just an echo. 11-2022