The only other time, aside from authorized municipal works personnel driving motorized tracked or ATV vehicles in the ravine that we've been aware of over the years, was one incident about thirty years ago when my daughter and I were out on a winter afternoon with our dogs when suddenly a snowmobile whooshed by us on one of the major trails.

We shouted after the driver, and felt shaken afterward, and decided to follow the tracks, which led out of the ravine, onto a nearby street, up the street, over to another, and directly to a house driveway. We knocked on the door and by coincidence a woman answered who we were familiar with as a regular ravine hiker. My daughter was furious and vented at the woman who calmed her and promised she would 'talk' to her husband. Who never again ventured through the trails with his snowmobile.

My email and accompanying photographs that I had taken Saturday when we came across someone zipping noisily through the ravine on an ATV, a helmeted, but unsecured child seated behind him,  senr on to the parks department of our municipality was answered quickly. And to my astonishment I was informed that the problem of ATV incursions in the ravine was an ongoing one; a situation we had no idea of, despite that we rarely miss a day on the trails. I was asked to try to snap a photo of the ATV license plate if I had another encounter like that of last Saturday's. In the meanwhile, they're alerted and they'll try to do what they can to head off any more similar events.

Just as well whoever it was hadn't tried out his luck again on Sunday, since it was literally packed with hikers tramping over and through all the trails, along with multitudes of children on bicycles. Today there were some other people out on the trails but no more than a half-dozen all told, other than a group of teen-age girls who passed us several times, with wide smiles on their pretty faces.

Jackie and Jillie are now no longer frightened at the prospect of something tall and wheeled bearing down on them, or heaving up behind them. They've become accustomed to seeing bicycles around the ravine now, ever since the lockdown which denied area residents access to parks, until they discovered a 'wilderness' forest right in the middle of the larger community. Extensive enough to offer them an exploring adventure, rough enough to contest their bicycling skills.

We were quite amazed at the number of squirrels racing about everywhere today. Not so much the black and grey squirrels, but the tiny red squirrels, usually solitary little fellows, but ramping up speed here and there in pairs and threes. And offering Jackie a challenge he simply couldn't resist, although there is resistance to his getting too far in his efforts to race the little animals, since he's on an extendable leash.

He still doesn't quite understand how those provocative little creatures can be within reach and then suddenly disappear. They're so swift, while he's racing toward them or after them in hot pursuit, he so often misses the little acrobats' sudden spurt of air-mobility in partial flight to gain a tree trunk and speedily ascend it. Leaving a dazed little dog behind at the foot of the tree.

On one of these spurts Jackie managed to keep his eyes on the squirrel as it gained the trunk of an old willow, then sprint with lightning ease upward. His head lifted, body poised, he watched, incredulous as the squirrel mocked him and continued its way up the tree. Little dogs learn something new every day. Today was Jackie's turn. Jillie, in fact, isn't that much interested. She is far more staid than her brother, and content to trot alongside us through the trails, though she will give a half-hearted start at a leap forward, and then fail to follow through.

What makes her leap forward and rush off, is beetles. Any that fly toward her will be rewarded by a snapping little dog, prepared to bite and swallow them rather than allow them to bite her, since she seems to think that's their intention. Should a fly ever happen to enter the house, and then try to get out again by buzzing around a window or the sliding glass doors, both she and her brother will be there, assiduously, determinedly leaping at it, intent on eradicating its presence in their home. Something we've never discouraged; works better than flypaper.