I love all animals, I really do. The only living creatures I really, really hate are mosquitos and ticks, and I’m not particularly wild about jellyfish after being incapacitated by one of them for over a week the summer before last. But I do love a lot of animals that a lot of people love to hate, like snakes and vultures and spiders. I see turkey vultures so often it’s hard to get SUPER excited about them (though I will take a picture if I can get a great one), but I’m just as excited about photographing a black vulture as I am something cute and fluffy. However, I’d be lying if I said I loved all animals equally because there are some animals that when I see them it’s enough to alter my mood for hours because they make me so happy. LIONS. I went CRAZY in Africa whenever I saw a lion, I’m seriously obsessed with them! All cats, really. Cheetahs, leopards, my housecats Gomez and Torticia. 🙂 Closer to home, bald eagles and really all raptors. I see a LOT of eagles and every single time I’m just in awe. Not only are they amazing birds, but I get all choked up about how successful we were in bringing them back from the brink of extinction. And also a little pissed off that we let them get so close, but mostly they make me think about not only the beauty of nature, but about the best part of human nature; so grateful that a lot of selfless people did whatever it took to save them. I mean, I easily see five eagles a week, almost so many that I could be, “yeah, whatever, another eagle”, but when I was a lot younger, first of all I didn’t live near their habitat, but also there just weren’t as many of them. I often meet people who have NEVER seen a bald eagle. So every single time I see a bald eagle I think, “I am so fortunate”. And I get almost even more excited about seeing other raptors in the wild – even species that we have a lot more of than eagles – because I actually see a lot of them less frequently than I do eagles! (I love raptors so much that I volunteer at the Raptor Conservancy of Virginia, where we rehabilitate injured raptors, so I’m also excited about seeing healthy raptors in the wild!)
Anyway, another one of the animals that I’d call one of my absolute favorites is the favorite of a lot of people: the fox. Until about a year ago, almost all of the pictures I’d taken of foxes were blurry, grainy streaks of them running away from me after sunset. Over the last year, though, I’ve had much better luck; I don’t know why, other than pure preserverance. Tuesday morning I woke up at 5:30 a.m. (what is WITH me and the absurd rising hours lately??) to get to Occoquan Bay National Wildlife Refuge when they opened at 7 for a pre-work hike. With sunrise barely after 6 a.m., I thought I would probably be too late to have a great chance of seeing any foxes, but just as I was heading back to my car I saw:
He stared at me for about a full minute, in one of those exchanges that just elates me for a whole day, then he ran off:
Whenever I have an encounter like that I just feel so happy. They are SO beautiful! I feel so lucky. So grateful. Life just seems so great after moments like that. 🙂
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