here are the snowshoe hare years when the furred lumps of their bodies spot the roads where I live in Homer, Alaska, like some kind of terrible acne. Usually, all you can identify amid the hairy mess is a single hind foot—in life, a miracle of engineering with such propulsion, it lands in of the forefoot after a leap. There are the porcupine seasons when the pavement is littered with their flattened bodies, a few quills rising like exclamation points on their demise. There are winters of moose kills, when friends get a call from the state troopers in the middle of the night, then groggily venture out to
