I've been doing a year long night time project photographing the animals which cross an opening in the stone wall which divides the backyard here in new town. Every night I set up a trail camera on side of the wall and capture who goes by. When I began this project, a year ago, I got the trail camera to photograph the animals on the longest night, thinking it would be a follow up on my longest day series of work. That was a bust because I hadn't found the right angle from which to take the photos and also because only a couple of deer wandered by, making it a pretty boring night. So, determined to make the whole animal at night thing work, I found a better angle and then I decided to watch them through the camera every night. And I decided to doit for an entire year because at that point, I thought a year was a ridiculously long time. I thought the pandemic might be over with in another year (hahaha! The joke is on me!!) and I even wondered if I would still be living in new town a year later because I live with the anxiety that every day could be the husband's last, and when he goes I gotta sell this place (not a hardship! I hate this house) and find a cheaper place to live. Also, let's be real, a year ago there were no vaccines quite yet and I still wondered if I might get covid and perish with a partially completed project.
Anyway, the animals came, but they were too fast for a clear photo so I put out a salt lick to slow them down. I was just hoping for a pause in front of the camera. I had no intention of feeding them because I didn't want to disturb their normal behavior. Then one of the foxes had a mangy tail, so I started to medicate him with ivermectin filled eggs (so ahead of the trends here! The price wasn't even jacked up when I bought it a year ago) and to keep him coming back every night (because I needed him to be consistent so that I could administer the medication on schedule) I started to drop peanuts in the opening, which the deer and the mice that live in the wall liked too. Then when the winter dwindled down and the animals began to shed their winter coats and they looked like they were all going bald and I freaked out because I thought they all had mange so I kept calling the local wildlife rehabilitator (I am totally going to offer him a book when I publish a book. I bothered him A LOT)) and he kept assuring me that they weren't going bald, just molting but, he said, it might be worse due to malnutrition and I could feed them, so I got one of those food blocks that the hunters use to lure the deer, except my block was completely there for the benefit of the deer and not my own murderous pleasure. At some point I left the camera out during the day and realized that all these birds land on the wall each morning so I got bird seed, too. The deer ate down the food block and I didn't replace it for the summer, but each night I do toss down an egg (no longer medicated) because now in addition to the bonded pair of foxes I watched last winter there are 3 (I think) fox children hanging around, a few peanuts, maybe a chopped up apple, or some grapes, or other fruit, maybe a few pieces of dog kibble and if there is an abundance of some meat that is plain enough to share I try to sneak some of that out too. I have to keep an eye on sweet pea, because she knows when I have the good stuff in my hands and she wants it too. In the morning I go out with a handful of black sesame seeds and corn for the birds, even though I decided they weren't what I was interested in photographing at the wall.
So, the year that felt as if it would never end, and that had a million different possibilities for disruption is coming to an end, and I am still here on this earth and still here in this spot. I'm glad I'm not dead, and I am glad I am getting to close out this year long project. It has brought me an incredible amount of joy to watch these animals each morning. I wake up and I have something to look forward to, in a year that left little to look forward to, smiling as I head outside with sweet pea to give her a morning chance to bathroom herself and to grab my camera full of potential.
That being said, I needed another project and, with the winter solstice breathing down my neck, being in the same place where I was last year, except instead of a vaccination on the horizon there is the new omicron variant which is threatening us all with it's increased rates of infection and unknown level of destruction. This pandemic isn't close to being over so I want (need would be a more honest word to use here) something with the same time passing level of routine as the nightly animal photos. I felt a bit of a panic about not having a project as intense as the daily (nightly) animals at the stone wall opening to focus my energy towards so I started to ask myself the questions that always lead me to my next project and that question is "What am I fixated on these days? What am I looking at?" The answer there is The Moon. I have been on the lookout for the moon and I have been paying attention to it's phase and I know it is because it seems to affect the animals and I am trying to see the patterns in there.
I have decided to photograph the moon for every day/night of the winter. This is a bit more complicated, because the moon is on it's own schedule, and shows itself when it feels like showing itself, not only when it's dark like my forest/backyard friends, but okay, I can look up the moon rise and moon set times on charts, but I didn't take into account TOTAL CLOUD COVER. I went out with my camera the night before the first day of winter to make sure I remembered how to set the camera up to photograph the moon, which I did, and I woke up on the first day of winter, grabbed my trusty camera, ran out in my bathrobe to photograph the moon on the first morning of winter, took a shower, and then ran back out an hour later to photograph the moon again because the moon had moved and the day had brightened. I was off to a great start! Then the first day of winter clouded up and by the time the moon rose again in the evening it was so cloudy that there wasn't even a bright spot where the moon should be. And I just woke up on the second day of winter to find that it's raining and the cloud cover is still so dense that the moon isn't visible again. Can we all put our hands together and hope for a visually interesting 3 months of moon sightings? I am planning on doing this project even if I end up with a season full of boring photos but it sure would be nice if it worked out differently.
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