The Creep In The Woods

I had to wait until today to type this up because yesterday afternoon, the R button broke off on my laptop* and I had to resort to Copy-and-Pasting the letter in my writing and not being able to Repeat Action in my editing, but you wouldn't believe a) how many times one Ctrl-Rs and b) how many words have Rs in 'em.  

Anyway...

I've mentioned it before, but my brother has one of those nature trail cameras he will often set up outside our family cabin, usually to find out where the badger keeps its den (the darn thing is smart enough to avoid most traps we set for it, but strong enough to bend the metal of the one that's caught it)(it's also small enough to evade our turbolasers, but that's beside the point).

I noticed that there was a dead animal in the trap outside the badger den, and thought I would look to see if the creature had come out at any time to try to get it, so I grabbed the SD card and took it inside to look at the footage.

It's got a motion sensor on it, and it only works when it sees something move in front of it, but this machine is a newer one that records video AND audio several times a day.  I saw a couple of deer walk by, several squirrels, and at least one large woodchuck, and--I think I've mentioned this before--I always imagine how it would be to see some kind of thing wandering around in the woods out there, lurching about in the dark, perhaps stepping up to the camera to investigate it.  What if it was a terrifying old woman with shining night-vision eyes?  Or a young, naked Rami Malek or old, fully-clothed John Malkovich.  How about Jon Heder in a corn chowder-spattered wedding dress?

But no, there was nothing explicitly terrifying . . . except that in the moments I had walked around the cameras, examining the traps and the den, you could hear me talking to myself, like a crazy person wandering around the park (or city library) or a character written by Stan Lee.  I couldn't help but wonder what my brother would think, when it comes time to watch the footage himself, but he's known me for decades, so the only person surprised would be me.

*It was SOOOO beyond time to retire the darn thing, but I kept using it out of stubbornness, despite it having about a dozen problems (from overheating to the sound going out to making a loud buzzing sound [the fan was broken, hence the overheating] to simply not wanting to boot up from time to time), since it was familiar to me.