As I was walking around town looking for interesting photos, I found these tracks in the parking lot. The weird thing about the tracks is that they aren’t accompanied by human footprints. They almost look like two criss-crossing wheels. Another odd thing is that they just simply end. The tracks stop in the middle of the parking lot… like whatever was making them picked up and flew away.
I thought it might be a remote control toy… But how would the wheels criss-cross like that?
If anybody has any clues – post a comment or send me an email.
Popularity: 1%
OMG I saw the same thing in my neighborhood! The first was in my nextdoor neighbors yard. There was a hole in the snow and it lead out to the edge of our driveway. I thought some critter popped out of the ground……While walking my dog I noticed in other yards/sidewalks. That’s when I questioned what left these tracks. What do you think it could be? Funny that you captured the same thing on film……
looks like it could be a unicycle?
Wow, quite a mystery. The very short curves and occasional minor but abrupt changes of direction suggest the trail of a small, very slowly-ridden bicycle or unicycle, especially towards the right in image 1591, but just ending in the middle of the lot without the marks of a person dismounting and carrying it away makes that unlikely. The parking space lines give some sense of scale, and the marks on the handicapped symbol are very curious. A few possibilities for them come to mind but it’s hard to say for sure just what they are.
Images 1592 & 1593 also give some sense of the mystery tracks’ width. The footprints in the upper right of 1592 provide some scale, and their short stride suggests they were made by a walking child, whose boots would likewise be of a small size. The asymmetrical bird prints in 1593 and on this page look like one of the Corvidae, a raven, crow, jay, or magpie, but it’s hard to say without knowing their size. If a crow’s, the prints could be up to almost 1 3/4″ wide or so, and the mystery tracks are certainly no wider than the bird’s feet. Bicycle and unicycle tires could be that wide and certainly narrower, and the size and smoothness of the mystery track’s curves make them unlikely to have been made by the wheels of a bicycle.
The last image, 1594, has several fascinating features. The tracks of the person that come from the street towards the camera may be seen quite close to the mystery tracks in the center distance. The way the person’s gait changed from a walk to a hop, and his or her hopping onto the low stone barrier and then continuing to hop out of the frame suggests that the tracks were made by a younger person. The mystery tracks in this image do not follow the pattern of a bicycle and are more like those made by overlapping unicycle trails, as Carol suggested. However, if that were the case it would have to be one unicycle following another unicycle trail very closely. Since the pairs of lines run nearly parallel for at least a foot or two and are unaccompanied by footprints they cannot have been made by one of those little scooters with rollerblade wheels. Where they cross the grooved pavement in the left foreground suggests that whatever made the tracks had some weight, and one could make sound arguments both in favor of and against their having been made by wheels. The disturbances visible in the snow on the outside of some of the curves in all of the images suggest wheels.
The sudden end to the mystery trail has to take wheels out of the spread. There’s evidence of youngsters in the area but nothing to clearly link them to the mystery. If not the trail of a very small bike or a unicycle or two, the only tracks I’ve seen that look like these were from lines, rope or wire fallen to the ground. This is extremely unlikely as they would have had to have been recovered by being lifted nearly vertically out of the snow and not have their bights straightened and dragged through the snow. Not a very likely scenario, especially as there would have had to be several of them.
Do you have any more pictures of these?
No more – I posted what I have. I must admit – I’m still perplexed by these photos and by what I saw that day.