Wild Boars of the Iberian Forest

When the forest grew quiet again, Oliver tiptoed back to the path and peered at the earth. Here, the ground dipped into a shallow puddle where last night’s rain had gathered. Wild boar tracks crossed it in a muddle of squishy shapes.

In the soft mud, the hoofprints were wide and deep, with clear marks of the two big toes and sometimes the smaller ones behind. “Heavier animals make deeper prints,” Oliver wrote. A little farther on, the path turned sandy and pale. There, the same tracks looked longer and blurrier, the edges crumbling into tiny grains.

“In sand,” he noted carefully, “the wind and footsteps soon spoil the shape. To read tracks properly, I must think about the weather, the soil, and how long ago the boars passed.”