Animal Nature

Chapter 5

Two hours later, Mara rolled the chair away from the computer screen. "What do you think? Are we done?"

"It's awesome," Shy said. "You're so talented."

"Thanks." Mara didn't think it took so much to stick some digital photos next to a text description, and then use some paw print graphic border that was already on the computer. But non-artistic people like Shyanne were usually impressed by things that seemed intuitive to Mara. 

And some people wouldn't even consider me to be artistic, Mara thought. Just because I don't paint, or sculpt, or draw.

Digital photography wasn't really Mara's thing, either. She preferred "real" photography—a manual camera, like her Pentax K1000, and the darkroom. Watching a photo develop was like magic, a picture appearing on a blank rectangle of paper. It was Mara's favorite part of the process, aside from some of the other special effects you could do in the darkroom: toning, solarizing, burning. And when you didn't put your photo through the fixative, the colors bloomed across the black-and-white photo. Just today Mara had taken an unfixed photograph to her most boring class of the day, Health, and watched it change to purples and reds during the forty-five minute period.

Photography was, in fact, the reason Mara was rushing through this little flyer for the shelter. Mr. Beck, Mara's photography teacher, had assigned a new project today: night photography. Since it was an advanced class they were allowed to use color film. Most of the others in her class had buzzed about going into Boston or Worcester to take their nighttime pictures, of neon signs and taillights. Mara didn't like to do what everyone else was doing.

So once Shy left—Shy was pretty shy, actually—Mara grabbed her camera and headed for the woods.

She had her tripod, and a flash for her camera, and the forest on her parents' property stretched for miles. She wanted to capture animals mid-jump, like that old photograph from when flash photography was first invented, of the deer frozen in flight. Mara knew she probably wouldn't get something that good. Even a simple ghostly green pair of eyes shining in the dark would be good enough for her.

But first she had to set up her camera and wait.

For a long time, over an hour, she didn't hear anything moving in the woods. Her eyes adjusted somewhat, though the moon was only a sliver in the sky. She knew there were deer out here somewhere, she'd found their prints and dropping before. They must be somewhere else tonight, or maybe they could smell her. She hadn't thought to use any of the scent neutralizer her father had for hunting.

The forest was eerily silent. She'd been out here at night before. She and her brothers, playing flashlight tag and camping on the edges of the backyard. There'd always been those sounds of crickets and branches falling and little creatures scurrying up in the trees. She couldn't hear any sounds like that now.

She checked her watch again. 11:15. She had to get inside so her parents didn't worry. It was a school night, after all. And she could try again tomorrow night. Still she waited. She wanted that shot!

Just as Mara was about to get up and head home, she heard a twig snap deep in the forest to her right.

Her head moved in the direction of the sound, but she couldn't see anything. There wasn't enough moonlight. Slowly, she moved the camera and clicked the shutter.

The shutter echoed like a rifle shot in the forest, and the flash briefly illuminated an area twenty feet in front of the camera. Mara stared into the bright afterimage overlapping the darkness. Was that a pair of green eyes? She pressed the shutter again.

This time, she didn't see anything. She shrugged and packed up her stuff. Once she used up this roll of film, she would find out if she'd captured anything or not. It was all part of the fun of photography.