I went for a long ski tonight. Thanks to the exertion and an oddly wet snowfall, things got blurry just a few minutes into the session and continued to get blurrier until I finished. At one point, I noticed what seemed to be a glove or mitten half-buried in the snow alongside the trail.
On my next lap, I slowed down to scoop up the item, thinking I’d stick it on a trailside sign for the owner to find later. Without stopping, I picked it up (rather deftly, if I do say so myself) and glanced down at it – whereupon I discovered that it wasn’t a glove or mitten, but a desiccated opossum. The empty eye sockets and bared white teeth were the tipoff.
I whipped the carcass back into the snowbank along the trail and continued on my way, now somewhat more grossed out than I had been.