I pulled the card off the wash camera Sunday, or Monday, doesn't matter which, I keep forgetting to write the pull date on the sleeve like I said I'd start doing after the last one. This is card four and I still haven't started the log. Something like a hundred and forty frames, most of it wind moving a branch, and I go through every single one, I don't skip, thats the whole method, skip one and thats the one you needed. The one that stops me is near the end. big dark shape, head down, too close to the lens for anything with legs that long, motion blur on the head like it turned right as the shutter went. record icon in the corner, same red circle my dads old camcorder had, tape used to warp in the heat every summer and he never once replaced the thing. anyway.

Under the shape the unit prints its data strip like they all do. temperature, the record icon, date, time, and a location tag I never set. fifty one degrees. zero five fifty AM, no, five fifty, same thing, I dont know why my hand wants to write it the multimeter way. oh six, oh seven, oh nine. and in the same block capitals as the rest of it: E MARSH.

There is no marsh here. I want that on the record before anybody tells me its a factory default, because I have owned three of these units before this one and I set the label field on all three myself, it does not autopopulate a name it was never given, it asks you, on setup, and I said no every time, I wanted numbers on the strip, not a name. this one has a name I never typed, under a date that isnt this year, same as the cameras with their own clocks never once agreeing with mine, under a temperature that (I checked the actual station archive for that morning, forty four was the recorded low, not fifty one, seven degrees off, not close enough to blame the sensor, and I havent found who else has touched this unit since I mounted it, if anybody, if they even needed to touch it to do that

it wasnt even pointed at anything. thats the part I keep circling back to. pointed at a gap in the brush where nothing walks, I picked that spot on purpose because nothing walks there, that was supposed to be the control, the boring camera, the one I check last.

Card five goes in tomorrow. Different spot.