The ones that got away

Last weekend we visited R’s parents again. The countryside has changed and matured in the scant weeks since our last visit; since then crops have been harvested, caterpillars have dispersed and pupated and summer is having it’s final gaudy fling. I went out for a short walk to photograph the Lords and Ladies, whose berries were fat and ripening in the hedgerow. Wearing new rubber soled baseball shoes I found my tread lighter than usual, and while I revelled in this it wasn’t my main concern – that lay in getting a correct exposure in the tricky dappled light. I’d crouched awkwardly among the leaf litter for a little too long, and after failing to get my shot I straightened up to see, looking at me over the hedge with uncertain curiosity, a small deer. I stared at the deer in astonishment – at furthest two metres from me – and it stared back, until the spell broke and it wheeled and vanished into the trees.

Two interesting things – the deer had, I am sure, been aware of me for some time and far from being afraid, it had indulged in a little people watching. What on earth would this creature have made of what it saw? Deer are widespread and considered vermin in the gardens and farmlands of Hampshire; people are no friend to them, and the deer generally know this. I found the creatures daring and curiosity exhilarating. The second interesting thing is that I have no pictorial record of this encounter. Why? I am a notorious shutterbug and had my camera switched on and ready in my hand.  I could say that it wasn’t set up for the shot, and I could say that I was afraid to move lest the flash of the camera lens startle the animal. Both are true, and neither. I just wanted to drink in this moment of contemplating an unfamiliar being without anything else getting in the way. To raise a camera at the moment my eyes met those of a wild animal would have been crass; instead of having a quiet shared moment with this creature, I would have become a gawking tourist.

After I’d recovered from the surprise of being stalked by a deer, I decided to forget the botanical shots and test out my new, silent shoes. Padding quietly along the trail I didn’t expect to see anything more than rabbits; the deer was probably several fields away by now. At a small clearing where two trails meet I stepped out into the open patch of short sunny rabbit grazed grass. As I did so, a red fox, slender and lithe, emerged from the thick hedge directly opposite and stepped into the clearing with me. Nose quivering, belly to the floor, it hadn’t noticed me at all, and I can only assume that it was intent on the trail of tender baby rabbits. For the second time in less than ten minutes my jaw dropped as I regarded the small, fierce animal creeping towards me. The moment at which the fox noticed me was one of pure indignity for both of us. It started in cartoon-like horror, all four feet leaving the ground simultaneously and flailing midair as it frantically tried to change direction by 180 degrees. The elegant creature from a moment ago had metamorphosed into Wiley E Coyote, and I was clumsily grappling with my camera like a buffoon from a silent film, determined this time to have proof of what I had seen. Ha! So much for my precious anti-tourist stance, here I was fumbling at the controls of my little point and shoot and doing a little jig of frustration.  It would have looked to a third party (perhaps a deer?) like someone had just shot 1000 volts through both of us. Net result? I got an oddly tilted picture of a blurred and empty hedgerow, the fox got no dinner and the bunnies hiding in the long grass undoubtedly got a right good belly laugh.

Related posts:

Share/Bookmark