Ignore that. I just didn't know how to set the date. That camera has only been taking pictures for the last week. Well, it's done taking pictures now actually, because it turns out that batteries don't last long, but I am getting ahead of myself.
You see I had a birthday recently. And I have this habit of telling people about all the marvellous wildlife I see out my window: turkeys, deer, foxes, coyotes, etc., etc.
So for my birthday, I was given a wildlife camera. I was also given Wii, but that is yet another blogpost down the road; and for the moment, it remains safely packed waiting to cause much merriment when it emerges.
After waiting for a week to see if the wildlife camera would unpack itself and begin taking pictures, I decided I need to do something myself. So I read all the directions, purchased the necessary batteries and memory card, loaded up the camera and went out into the woods to mount it to a tree.
This--as nearly as I can restruct events--was on the afternoon of Friday, Jan. 22, 2010. Which my cleverly programmed camera would have recorded dutifully as October 16, 2008. But only if it had taken any pictures.
I was too clever for it. With my instruction book in hand, I carefully set it up where it would have a good view of the lane behind my house and the woods on the other side of it. I tried to point the camera toward the large tree next to which most animals pass when stepping out of the woods into the lane. This struck me as where I was likely to get most activity.
I followed all the directions for testing the camera, and as far as I could tell, everything was set up perfectly. All I had to do was wait. And I am good at that.
So I forgot about the camera over the weekend.
But when I got home late Monday afternoon, I thought I should go look at the camera and see if it had taken any pictures. It was about 5 in the afternoon on Jan. 25 (which my camera dutifully recorded--as you shall see--as almost 11am on Oct. 19, 2008).
Carefully, I walked down into the lane, then walked through the winter brush to a spot on the slope just below the camera, then stepped to peer at the small square in which the number of exposures is displayed, in order to see how many pictures the camera had taken over the weekend.
Except . . . I forgot two things. 1) I forgot to put on my glasses, so I couldn't see what it said. And, oh yeah, 2) I forgot it was nearly dark and when I moved I would not only trigger a photograph, but a flash that would go off--right in my face.
As you can see, if a deer ever gets close to this camera after dark, I am going to have three months worth of cardiac-arrest slaughtered venison just waiting to be cleaned.
Oh how you would laugh at the expression on my face if the flash was not brighter than a nuclear flashpoint, rendering me (and everything else for forty yards) a perfect blank.
Really. Just imagine that expression. You can almost do reality justice.
So I staggered back indoors and waited to regain sight (about 24 hours). This time, I was clever and decided to approach the demon flash box in broad daylight to protect my eyes.
This allowed me to once again trigger a picture of myself: a really striking study of my left forearm.
It being daylight, I could see that the display said that the camera had taken THREE pictures.
I was pretty confident that I knew what two of them were, so I deduced that the third must have been a close-up of mud while I was setting the camera up. I mean what else would make sense. I decided to leave the camera there for the rest of the week. That was on Tuesday.
On Wednesday, of course, we then got a snowfall. And the cold weather followed and I left the camera, covered in snow, strapped to a tree.
Until, finally, on Friday, I thought I would go get it and see what resulted. Strangely enough--I really have no explanation for this--when the camera took my picture again as I went to collect it, it missed me entirely.
I really don't know why I don't appear anywhere in this image. Maybe I moved just the right way at just the right time, but somehow, I am not here. Instead, we have a still life of the woods in snow: clearly the same setting as the other photos.
This model of clarity was the fourth photo. I loaded them all on the computer, and was particularly eager to see what I thought of as my "mud" photo.
But this turns out not to be a photo of my incompetence at all. The time stamp makes clear that it was taken almost exactly six hours after the first photo, which would mean something like 11pm on Monday night last week. And it is clearly a late night photo, so something must have moved and triggered it.
But if you can find what it is, please let me know. All I see is woods at night.
The post should end here, one would think. With this mysterious photograph of dark woods, triggered by some invisible agent.
But, in fact, when I loaded the images on the computer, I noticed that I was getting a low battery warning. I sat in front of the computer after looking at the images, trying to decide if I should go back out before nightfall and put the camera up again. Or should I wait until I got new batteries.
I decided to wait. I began to read e-mail.
And--you will predict this--as I sat there reading e-mail, a movement out the window caught my eye. I looked up. There, slowly, tentatively, sniffing his way, step by wary step, a six-point buck stepped cautiously past that big tree down into the lane to nibble twigs.
I sat and watched him, looking from time to time with regret at my wildlife camera. After about fifteen minutes he left.
The next morning, as I wrote at the computer, a flock of about a dozen wild turkeys made a parade through the woods parallel to the lane, about fifteen to twenty feet behind that tree.
That was it. I went out and put the camera back up. I left it there for three days. When I went to get it again, it was non-responsive. At some point, the batteries went dead. What is inside right now, I have no idea. I guess I need to get new batteries and find out.
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