"Oh, how charming," I said to myself as I emerged from the house this morning, "Some woodland creature's been frolicking in the snow outside my door!"

As I slipped down the long, long driveway, I followed the creature's tracks backwards in time, as they lengthened to a loping run, and then became two sets of tracks, forming a wild double helix of a chase. One veered off blithely into the woods, followed by another, bolder and more sinister. Prowling.

"Oh, god," I revised, gripping the wheel as I made my perilous, distracted way down the icy road towards the beginning of the tale, "It wasn't a frolic. It was a woodland MEMENTO, one creature dragging another off bodily into the woods by my front door."