Translated material
Lisa Patrikeevna
Yesterday , while thinking about writing a post, I also thought about why the fox is Patrikeevna. It turned out that this is very interesting and has nothing to do with any Patricks, but with the cunning Lithuanian princes, who greatly influenced Russian reality through their descendants. I won’t retell it - it’s all publicly available.
And this is what my story is about.
A decent layer of snow fell in the foothills and the ground was covered quite well. But the rains that came before this played a dirty trick - in some places there are muddy puddles in the fields under a thick crust of ice. I made it to Svetly Lake in the morning and in the frost (-12 it was!) on a frozen track, but quickly retreated from there - the sun was shining too brightly, I was afraid that the slopes would melt and I wouldn’t get out of there until nightfall.
There was also an idea to visit another lake, which lies away from all roads and freezes in winter. But he didn’t bother to go there in his puzoterka, he threw it away and stomped across the snow-covered field. Nice! There is only ankle-deep snow, light frost with almost no wind, the sun is still warming in the back. The walk is about two and a half kilometers in one direction.
Somewhere in the middle of the path, chains of fox tracks began to come across. And the closer I got to the bushes along the stream flowing from the lake, the more often.
I began to take a closer look. In general, seeing a fox mousing in the fields is not such a rarity. 400-500 meters away is a completely normal plot. This time it happened too - she was mouseing on the edge of the bushes, right in the direction that I was walking. Moreover, she saw me: I stuck out like a pillar in the middle of a snow-covered field. She saw it, sat down, looked at me and started mouseing again.
Let me try, I think. He laid an arc away from her, towards the bushes. He didn’t shorten the distance, she moused quietly for herself. Everything seemed to be on my side: I was walking from the sun, although the breeze was pulling almost in her direction, I still had a small margin in its direction, so as not directly at her.
He reached the bushes and walked carefully towards her. Here, too, the weather played along with me: the sun was warm, the snow did not creak, and the snow icicles stuck to the bushes periodically fell, so there was enough noise even without me.
At some point, a mousing fox became visible through the bushes. This is my first frame (this and further all frames without crop).
She continued to mouse.
So I stomped and crept a little closer.
All. Between me and the fox there is a bare field. The distance is still quite large, you can’t really shoot anything.
I sat down under a bush and cried. Not very comfortable: sorry for the details, but I was wearing jeans over bare underpants, without any thermal underwear, and the jeans immediately began to absorb moisture with pleasure. From the outside, of course.
I had to immediately begin implementing the plan: I squeaked like a vole. A healthy vole caught in someone's teeth. In short, it squeaked much louder than they usually squeak. And he was heard!
Although, she had doubts...
After a pause, he squeaked again, but much quieter.
And - the process began!
And he went in the right direction!
I occasionally “stimulated” her by squeaking.
Sometimes she was distracted by real voles.
But closer...
...even closer...
...very close!
I was afraid of two things: loud clicks of the shutter (but everything worked out, oddly enough) and the fact that the fox was persistently moving more and more to the left, trying to sniff me.
And at some point it happened, I was declassified!
A couple of parting shots and that’s it!
Only when scrolling through the photos did I realize the transience of this meeting: from the first frame to the last - 8 minutes! Well, plus 20 minutes to approach through the bushes. Just half an hour... And so many emotions! And the pleasure that everything coincided so well and that everything was done correctly.
This alone would be enough to say that it was not in vain that I went.
But there is still something to talk about.
;-)