ISO

Identified Sleeping Object

It is not a cold winter, and yet I was kind enough to hang some fat balls for those in need. Only rarely are they visited by birds, probably because there is ample food in this neighbourhood. It is not a cold winter, after all.

However, despite the absence of manifest visitors, the ball mounted to the wall is obviously getting smaller and smaller, so I wondered who enjoyed it so much? I had considered the possibility of rodents getting to it, but ruled this out, as the ball is 1.5m from the pavement.

Last night, when I went to sleep and took a final look out of the window, the riddle was solved. Something was sitting on top of the fat ball, and as it was not moving, I suspected it was a dead leaf. A dead leaf, indeed, as it did not answer my knocking the window. When I took a closer look, I realised it was a mouse, or even a rat?

The photographer in me woke up to get his rusty old DSLR, which was no mean feat around midnight, only to find it was too dark to get anything done. The window was dirty enough to reduce my flash light to an ugly mist, so I set up my tripod for a really long exposure time, but I was still hampered by not being able to automatically focus, and I trialed and errored it manually. Note to the self: when working from tripod, switch off image stabilisation, as its mechanism interferes with the absence of perceivable movement. I spent about 30 minutes trying to get my best shot, and all this time my model was not moving a hair. I guess is it was asleep, having enjoyed a good snack.

This was not going to work, so I decided to step outside to take a closer shot. I planned to close the door right behind me, to avoid the Tom & Jerry-style gag of the mouse sneaking in and locking me out, shooting me with my own camera. However, right when I returned with the keys, the fat ball was empty. I will keep an eye on it for the next few nights, hoping that sooner or later, I will get a prize-winning picture of this Identified Sleeping Object.