The wife came by and interrupted my work this evening.

Twice.

You see, the masked heeler and I were sitting out on the front porch, sipping coffee in the evening shade. (No, just I was drinking. Heelers don't drink coffee. Heelers don't need coffee.) The heeler was on duty, guarding our little corner of town from shih-tzus, squirrels and girls walking poodles, whilst I was tallying up the tiny numbers on the map of the first of the two antelope counts we just flew.

One count block and township at a time.

So, anyway, the wife comes home from work, bearing provisions to support our family for another, ohhh, maybe two days. Including bing cherries for me, which I quickly snatch out of the plastic shopping bag that allowed me to see what she was trying to hide.

Some time later, she came back outside. With a once familiar envelope from the local grocery store, containing a black plastic box of slides.

Slides.

I haven't shot film in what, almost two years? But as she cleaned up the house for youngest son's graduation, just in case some company should arrive, the wife had found quite a few rolls of film that had been sitting around for a while. Including this little time capsule of mine.

First few shots were of the bear/cat fountain just a couple blocks over.

Most of the rest of the roll was vastly overexposed, and it took me a few slides to recognize what I had been trying to take pictures of.

Elk.

Shots taken from the air, sometime early in 2003. When I had first used my new digital camera on aerial elk counts and been afraid to rely on the new technology, taking duplicate shots of each elk herd with the film camera as well.

Never bothered developing the film, because the digital shots came out so well, and so convenient.

So. That was the last time I used film.

But in between the elk pictures and the shots of the town's fountain were a few other slides.

Slides of these two critters. Taken shortly after the wife and I, with the assistance of one of the candidates for Governor and the local radio DJ, had transplanted them into their new home.

Cool.

It's not the best picture, being a hand-held shot of a hand-held slide, but here's the two little transplanted owlets in their new spruce tree home. Two years ago.