After our morning snow shoeing I lingered outside to box up some kindling. Cosmo who had come along on the trail was hanging around, genereally behaving himself. I kept an eye on him as he tends to take off on not-so-safe adventures out on the ice.
Suddenly, Cosmo became very alert and began running down to the inlet. I followed to see what the fuss was about. He ran across the floating ice to a little island – no barking, just intense physical attentiveness and rooting around the brush.
Suddenly a large dark animal – its body the size of Cosmo, but with very short legs, makes its way out of the brush toward the water, Cosmo, still not barking, giving a friendly chase. A beaver? too large. What could it be?
The animal throws itself toward the water, rolling down the slope on its side – then just before it hits water – I see the flat tail. A beaver after all.
Cosmo, now standing on a small island of ice, jumps into the freezing water – a hopeless effort, of course. The beaver is long gone.
Luckily Mo makes it out onto dry land on his own – I wasn’t looking forward to crawling out on the ice to help him out.
