I was in Girl Scouts for years, graduating from one colored vest to another. I was a Brownie when my troop did a camping trip in the California woods, and armed with a ringed sketchbook and an identification book on local animal tracks, twelve little girls began to learn the difference between wild animals’ feet. I drew the western coyote’s, three inches long with oval toes and thin nails that carved into the hardened mud like a freshly sharpened pencil, tearing through too-thin paper. I labeled the differentiating features between it and the wide mountain lion print with a wavy, bowed heel. Nailness. Bobcats were more difficult to identify because I never knew if they truly were a bobcat, or a juvenile mountain lion. The chaperones insisted that mountain lion cubs never went anywhere without their mother, but I wasn’t so sure. I’m not a little girl anymore, and I often wonder why our troop leader wanted us to memorize the difference between these tracks if, at the end of the day, they were all predators to run from. Not everything needs to be an allegory. All the same, it seems no matter how fast I run, no matter the miles between me and my childhood bedroom, I still feel the imprint of chewed-down fingers into my skin when I bury my nose in my thinning, pink baby blanket.