Thank you. How the fuck was this unanswered for ten hours?
When a rabbit runs they place their front paws next to each other (the "balls" in the image) and their hind legs are placed in front and in-between their front paws. Because the hind paws are so long and the rabbit is running at high speed they leave a long impression in the snow (the "shaft" in the image). The rabbit was running away from our point of view.
Um… anyone know what kind of animal left these prints in the snow?
Seems pretty explicit to me. In addition to that, the other comments suggest that this is not common knowledge (a wallaby? Something hopping with a tail?), so I don’t think the title was intended to be a rhetorical question only.
The title here is the same as it as on Mastodon. The ALT text for the picture is displayed as ‘Image Description’ in the body of the Lemmy post. As that states, the prints being from a hopping animal has already been guessed. The OP is called ‘Meanwhile in Canada’, indicating that it’s an account for the non-serious side of Canadian life, and that it was always very unlikely going to be a wallaby (pretty much native to Australasia only).
The thing is: no-one really cares what the animal actually is - the photo has been posted because the prints look a bit like a penis. It’s a jokey question, for which the appropriate response is a jokey answer. Anyone trying to factually identify the animal is being way too literal, and somewhat missing the point.