Shoot to Kill

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Friday noon. There I am, lying in bed, netbook in my lap, surfing and waiting for the clouds to clear. No use getting up and heading for the woods if it's overcast. The lighting conditions do not favour wildlife photography today, all I'd get is a fuzzy mess.

It's a wolf, I swear! And that's a bear!
Yeah, right, if you say so...

I occasionally glance out the window and across the balcony to see if the sky has cleared. Nope. No such luck. Suddenly, some brown specks enter my field of vision. I blink to make sure my eyes aren't deceiving me. I jump up, attach my canon of a lens to the Rebel, assume stealth mode and budge the window ajar. The flecks wince. Are they supposed to do that? I pull the zoom out past 600mm. A horned creature is staring right at me. To it's side, a harem of two. Lucky bastard.

It's quiet today. The kids that race their quads around the block are at school. The working class is still busy earning their pay checks and the only people you'll find around are stay at home mothers and unemployed gits like me.

Autumn has descended on the landscape and the fallen leaves have all but stifled the grass in the forest clearings. Here, on the edge of town, the pasture is better. With the wolves and hunters doing their rounds in the neighbouring hills, it's also safer. The stag is a cocky one. He appears to sense he is untouchable. Hunting season may be over for him but the does, fidgety and ready to escape, are in danger till the year end.

The air is deathly still, the molecules seemingly suspended in mid air. I point and shoot. The sound of my shutter shatters the equilibrium they were beginning to settle in. I stop - they relax. I snap - they jump. A fifteen minute ballet of sorts.

The photographer in me wishes for better light so I could capture the energy, the action but I settle for something more akin to still life. Today, I do not end up with a fuzzy mess.

It's a deer!

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