This evening, around eight, the backyard camera caught a familiar blur moving fast across the frame. One of the neighborhood skunks ran through like it had somewhere important to be, that low, determined waddle turning into a brief sprint before it vanished out of view.

What lingered was what it left behind. A new set of footprints stitched into the fresh snow, crossing and overlapping older tracks from earlier wanderers. The prints were small and neat, almost careful, as if the skunk was aware of its own notoriety and preferred to pass quietly.

I like knowing the backyard stays active after dark. While I am inside, winding down the day, other lives are busy out there, navigating cold ground and open space, following instincts I will never fully understand. The camera only catches a few seconds of it, but the snow keeps a longer memory.

By morning those tracks will probably blur or disappear, erased by sun or wind or the next snowfall. For now, they are proof that even an ordinary night holds movement and purpose, and that our little patch of ground is part of a much larger, unseen routine.