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The fox from the last week of November was back on duty in the first week of December. He decided this time to take a closer look at the camera trap.
It's a good thing the fox likes to use this route on his nightly travels, or I would almost have gotten skunked. There were no deer at all this week, and only one other animal, a squirrel, which we'll soon see. (I surprised a young deer with its mother near the camera trap this morning, but they had not passed in front of the set.)
The fox inched closer and closer to the camera, evidently scenting my presence. In the next frames, the fox is directly under the camera, and all you can see in his tail.
I had a million -- okay more like a hundred -- squirrel hits.
A nice thing about the camera firing three frames whenever it senses a critter is that it makes it easier to find the critter as you scroll through the images and spot the movement. I didn't immediately see the squirrel scaling the rock. (Note 20-degree temperature drop from 12/2 to 12/3.)
As if one squirrel setting off my trap a million times isn't bad enough....
Find Elmo (the squirrel) and his pal. Give up? Check out the bay laurel in the background.
The squirrel and fox each came through the trap on three separate days (Mon-Tue-Sat for the squirrel; Sun-Wed-Sat for the fox). When the fox last came through on Saturday night (Brrr! Note the temperature!), he didn't even get an eye-shine, which I take to mean he's no longer interested in the camera. Nine minutes after he exited this frame stage left, he walked back across to exit stage right, again ignoring the camera.
He's close enough to the bathtub water trough to have paid it a visit in that amount of time, but who knows. It would be fun to set out a whole string of camera traps to see if you could catch the fox moving across the landscape.
This morning I moved the camera to another nearby location which, unfortunately, is beneath an oak tree. Hopefully I won't get another hundred pictures of a squirrel hunting for acorns!
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