The alarm went off and I batted at it with a paw for a moment before uncurling enough to shift back to something with thumbs. Unfortunately gaining thumbs lost me my nice toasty fur coat and as soon as the unholy siren had been quenched I shifted right back. Which left me half in and half out of the bed, tangled in the sheets, but warm.

Marion muttered something I couldn’t quite make out from her side of the room, but didn’t make a move to join me in the land of the living. With a long suffering sigh –wasted on my 9/10th asleep audience– I headed out the door for the morning patrol.

The campgrounds were still empty, we wouldn’t be getting any campers for at least another six weeks, but I still had a job to do.

Thankfully I’ve never minded the cold that much (complaining aside), but I was still happy to see winter finally creeping back up the mountain. The woods were just starting to green again and as I made my rounds every so often I’d find patches of snow still hidden in the shadows. The plants weren’t the only thing responding to the warming temperatures, the ground was littered with the smells of critters young and old as they emerged from their hibernation. Nothing worth stopping to snack on yet, but there was the promise of a nice rabbit or two later in the season.

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