While walking out to the ditch to turn in the irrigation water at 2:00 am under the Harvest Moon, I saw a critter scurrying my way. Skunks don’t see very well, so it got pretty close to me before it stopped and we had a brief stand off — long enough for me to sweet talk it into letting me get a couple of photos. The skunk wasn’t sure what to think about a giant troll talking to it in the middle of the night — it stomped its front feet and stepped from side to side trying to decide whether to scurry past me, spray me or retreat. It finally decided on a compromise and ran into the tall grass on its right. Fortunately, it turned out to be an uneventful encounter, but I had a difficult time getting a clear shot of the nervous little skunk as the shutter speed was only 1/5 of a second at ƒ/1.4. On the other hand, it was easy to get a clear shot of the spider that had built its web on the irrigation gate. It held perfectly still.