Animal Tracks: Dec. 13 - 20

A young cow moves through a harvested cornfield at sunset before searching for water on a frozen pond near Pleasant Plains, Ill.

A pug named Barney looks into the camera with a dusting of snow on its face after playing in Mainz, Germany.

Captain Gary Mobbs, left, and assistant chief James Neils of the Hauser Lake Fire Department in Hauser Lake, Idaho, use a rope to pull a deer from atop the frozen lake on a recent icy day. The deer was brought to shore and shortly after the animal returned to the nearby woods.

Amira Bichara, right, gasps in relief as a golden retriever rescued from a house fire begins breathing normally in Kettering, Ohio. Local residents assisted as a firefighter administered oxygen to revive the dog, who was rescued from the attached garage that was filled with smoke.

Duma the cat watches out of her window into a winter garden covered with new snow overnight in Gelsenkirchen, western Germany.

A tree nymph butterfly feeds on a pointsettia at Butterfly World in Coconut Creek, Fla. The staff was rounding up 12,000 butterflies to place them in breeding cubicles to protect them from an expected freeze.

A squirrel jumps onto a trash can in Princes Street Gardens in Edinburgh, Scotland.

Seven Rhodesian Ridgeback puppies from a litter of 17 look out of their box in Nauen, Germany. In September, a 4-year-old Ridgeback named Etana had 17 puppies. All of them survived.

Juan Barnabe looks dejected as he sits in his car as the soccer team Benfica's mascot eagle, Victoria, stands behind him, after the Portuguese League football match against Rio Ave at Luz Stadium in Lisbon, Portugal. Barnabe, long time handler and owner of Benfica's mascot, was fired by the club.

Cross-eyed opossum Heidi sits in her enclosure at the zoo in Leipzig, eastern Germany. In the wild, a cross-eyed animal would not have much chance for survival.

A swan wanders in a snowy St.James's Park in central London.

A Persian cat sleeps on its cage during a regional cat exhibition in Russia's southern city of Stavropol.

A young leopard cub named Eve snarls at her handler in its enclosure at the Nairobi animal orphanage during a pre-Christmas-party for the wild cats in captivity who were visited by their ''adoptive parents,'' corporates and individuals who contribute funds annually for the upkeep of the mostly orphaned cats.

A captive western screech owl looks out of an enclosure at Wildlife Safari in Winston, Ore.

A dog is transported in a child's stroller on a snowy street downtown Bucharest, Romania.

A pigeon holds a berry in its mouth while foraging for food in the snow, in Hartley Wintney, a parish in the English county of Hampshire.

A shoal of fish are seen hurling themselves to the surface of Lake Karla in central Greece. Scientists fear that the fish are suffering from malnutrition.

A female elephant feeds her calf in the early morning hours in the Lewa Wildlife Conservancy in Kenya.

Three black palm cockatoo siblings, a 3-month-old, 2-month-old and a 23-day-old, are displayed to the media at the Jurong Bird park in Singapore.

A rare Philippine crocodile peers out of the water in its basin in the zoo of Zurich, Switzerland.

A squirrel eats on a nut after digging it out of a snow bank at Gibson Park, in Great Falls, Mont.

Lioness Shera tries to keep watch over some of her seven lion cubs while they play at the Smithsonian's National Zoological Park in Washington, D.C., during the cubs' public debut.

David and Cami Machado and their 12-year-old son, Davis, visit Jett, the 5-month-old colt they adopted in Monroe, Wash.

Deer are seen in a pasture as snow covers the landscape near Schinnen, southern Netherlands.

Wild turkeys cross in front of a stopped pickup truck in the fog in Lamoille, Nev.

Rabbits are dressed in traditional Hanbok during a photo call at an amusement park in Yongin, south of Seoul, in South Korea.

Looking much like ornaments on a Christmas tree, a flock of ibis roost on a pine tree, in Surfside, Fla.

A meerkat peers out of its enclosure as it stands next to freshly fallen snow at the zoo in Leipzig, eastern Germany.

A flock of black skimmers face into a cold blustery wind as they huddle together on Ben T. Davis Beach in Tampa, Fla.

U.S. Sen. Kent Conrad (D-ND) and his dog, Dakota, leave in an elevator outside the Senate Chamber after Conrad voted on cloture for the tax compromise bill in the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C.