Not always so long ago, either. I spent much of my childhood and adolescence that way in semi-rural parts of the northeastern US- not far from where Sleeth would have been- in the late 90s and early 2000s. There were rarely other kids interested in the same degree of wandering and exploration though, and I had a bit of a talent for disappearing to do my own thing and going unseen, so maybe I was a bit of a holdout. In this area it feels like it wasn’t until the 2010s that landowners started becoming much more exclusionary towards this kind of wandering (especially along creeks), and kids and youths at the local schools and college have become much more indoors-oriented in roughly the same time-frame.
Perhaps because I spent so much time furtively poking through the fields, hedgerows, and woodlots, I pretty much always assume I look and act suspicious. I’ve had some uncomfortable encounters but none that went bad.
Reading through all the interesting posts of shared run-ins with suspicion, I suddenly remembered a time when I had the opposite happen. It was about 10pm at night. A student and I had just finished burying a mountain lion in the lawn next to the university greenhouses, and the result looked very much like what it was, a fresh grave. Just as we were standing with our shovels resting next to the pickup truck on the lawn and admiring our work, the campus police slowly rolled by shining their searchlight on us. I thought “Oh damn, I hope they don’t make us dig it up.” But they just kept rolling. I could just imagine the one cop saying to the other, “You know, the shift is almost over and this looks above my pay grade.”
Ha, same strategy, I basically dress like a caricature of a NatGeo photographer. It’s helped, but I still get singled out sometimes. Usually they leave me be after I show them my camera roll full of bird and bug photos
(Sidenote, that camera strap sounds adorable, where did you get it?)
A neighbor once accused me of taking pictures of him without his permission and demanded I show him what was on my camera…what ensued was an embarrassing presentation of the 15 or so shots I took of a northern mockingbird that had landed on his porch awning. He was not impressed.
In a remote island the almost only source of light and freshwater was the public shower/toilets. At night, I would crouch and circle around the building with my torch and camera for a great harvest of reptiles, hermit crabs and isopods. Taking pictures of giant geckos basically meant pointing my camera at the windows of the toilets from the outside.
Thankfully most of the people using the amenities at that time were my students.
Good to know I’m not the only one iNatting in and around public restrooms. lol
But I find them so irresistible when they’re plopped in the middle of a forest and lit up brighter than the sun.
You just gotta see what might might be crawling on those walls.
I use my flash, though, so it should be quite obvious I’m not doing creeper things. Still, would not be surprised if someone were to call the police or park rangers on me one day.
Thanks for the laugh! Delightful image of the threatening nature of a woman of a certain age with a hori-hori and a field press! And I’m sure you knew how to use them, too!
Many years ago, I did a rare plant survey along the main road through a rural county in Iowa, at the same season that some people harvested the wild-growing marijuana*. The sheriff was called about me so often that he eventually stopped sending deputies to check me out.
The wild marijuana in Iowa is the descendant of forms cultivated for fibers. It’s very low in THC. Sellers used it to cut the good stuff. Newbies smoked the wild stuff and were disappointed – or had very good imaginations.
I’ve had people ask what I’m doing, usually starting with the polite “May I help you?” Some ranchers are kind of paranoid, but fortunately I can talk cattle well. Being female, I have an easier time when taking photos of bugs on restroom walls than guys would, but I do get asked for explanation occasionally. A possible advantage is that I’m willing to talk about what I’m doing much longer than most people are willing to listen; pretty soon they go away.
I once had someone ask if I was OK because I was kneeling in the middle of a sidewalk. I pointed out to him that there was a pavement ant war going on. He didn’t seem to find it as interesting as I did. To be fair the ants were so small that we couldn’t make out much. But if I’d launched into a description of the gore and guts that no doubt were being scattered around he’d probably have become concerned about me in a different way.
And the first half of the story?
Dead mountain lion on the lawn?
Haven’t had a bad experience, but only one really good one.
We were at Cape Point looking-at-flowers.
He says - what are you looking at? I’m a tree botanist from Kruger Park.
PS maybe an unseen advantage of my National Geographic branded camera case?
Fortunately I live in Spain where people are generally more good-natured. I once crouched/ bent over on the sidewalk next to a wall at night with my left hand on the wall (so I can put the camera on it to stabilise) trying to take a photo of a moth on the wall. A car passed, then reversed and stopped next to me and the young couple inside asked me: Are you okay? I was really embarrassed that I had to admit I am taking a photo of a moth.
I’ve gotten this a few times too, namely last year in about november. A particularly unfriendly old couple from the apartments nearby called the police because they said i “looked very suspicious”.
i was wandering through a forested area (not private property at all) looking for fungi to take back with me and identify. Despite my attempt at a long-winded explanation of my hobby to get the police and couple off my back, they doubled down and told me to get out. especially since whenever fungi is specified, police and similar always go to the thought that i’m just some hippie looking for psychoactives.
i haven’t been back since though, and along with the lack of any fungal growth around my neighborhood, i’ve kind of given up on identifying fungi of my own for now.
Plenty of suspicious stares at the weirdo (me) taking pictures of the plants in the pavement cracks. Most I’ve had was a police van pulling over, and the two of them getting out to make sure I wasn’t taking pictures through windows.
They seemed satisfied when I offered to show them a few pictures of plants on the camera - but they didn’t seem so interested in me talking about how there’s locally very rare wall pennywort in the river right beside them - on hearing me talk about plants, they were more worried that I’d spotted Japanese knotweed!
But generally people aren’t so paranoid. It’s always a nice feeling to take the camera away from your face after you’ve snapped some bird in a tree or something and realise that someone nearby has realised what you’re trying to get a picture of and is halfway through having a go themselves.
Sigh. Most of the time, the most I am asked is if I lost something. I’ve only had two encounters I thought were rude and aggressive. One was a local officer who actually blew his horn at me as I was taking a picture of a flower/bee in a park where it was clear what I was doing. I think he thought it was funny. The other was a woman who wanted to know why I was walking everyday across a few backyards (I had permission from those who were the owners). It wasn’t that she asked but that she asked a series of questions like an interrogation. What was I looking for? Why was I taking pictures? Why was I there everyday? Why would I do any of this? I calmly answered questions as politely as I could and smiled at her. I showed her pictures. She still wasn’t satisfied. (She owned a property I do not walk on a few gardens away.) When I exasperatedly told my brother about it afterwards, he jokingly said I should have told her I was looking for my pet python and asked her if she had seen it. I have patience with people, but clearly she wanted me to promise not to walk that way again, and I wasn’t going to promise that.
New iNat merch idea!
Those magnetic signs that you can stick to your car. You could keep it inside the vehicle, but when you park, pull it out of your truck, backseat, etc and slap it on.
They are usually only 12" x 18" or 12" x 24" (about 30.5 cm x 46 cm or about 30.5 cm x 61 cm, for the metric folks), and very thin, so big enough to been seen but still very portable (for a car).
It could have the Nat logo and underneath say “iNaturalist”, or maybe a bit more.
eg. “iNautralist Observer”, “Citizen Scientist”, “Nature Cataloger”, etc
I have Inatted off highways many times, probably looking insane climbing up a hill in Utah to find rare endemic plants, or worse—off a busy road wading through ticks to find rare orchids(and on a bend where a distracted driver can hit you).
