Photo fail weekend

Last weekend we went to Saturday Market for some fresh veg, maybe a little pig on a pole (which is barbecued pork kabobs, so get your mind out of whatever trash heap it was wallowing in — I know what kind of people hang out on this blog). I took my camera to capture there and share here a little slice of my Americana pie.

Totally forgot the camera in the car. Buh-rilliant, yes, but the fresh foods were calling me — I was deliriously hypnotized by their siren song.

But later in the day I realized I could make it up to all you lovely readers when I discovered baby beaks sticking out of the barn swallow nest in my horse shelter.

I really did put in an effort to get cutesy-pie, fuzzy-wuzzy baby bird pictures. I love the little birdlets all nestled in their downy home, squawking for supper from mama, and was eager to share. I climbed my tall fence and perched on the top rail, wedged under the shed eaves, getting slivers in my ass on one end and in my forehead on the other.

I snapped photos (ignoring the message from my camera to turn the stoopid flash on). They all turned out not so good. So I took a few more with the flash enabled. They turned out much more almost discernible.

Crappy creepy barn swallow photo No.1.

As luck would have it, the only time one of the little beggars poked its head out of the nest was when I was starting the muscle twitch to bring fingers around to the flippy-uppy flashy-thingy. Yeah, I was so excited, and uncoordinated from changing my mind, that my effort resulted in this bizarro piece of double exposure. I’m holding my breath waiting for the Pulitzer announcement.

After raising the flash, I waited, and I waited, and I waited, and I waited for one of the little cretins to raise its head again. No. But the nice thing about digital cameras is that you simply cannot take too many crappy photos. Even with the flash, I got a couple dozen photos that look like this gem on the right below … and even more that make it look really good by comparison.

Crappy creepy barn swallow photo No.2.

I chose this photo to share because it’s one of the more betterish ones, and it also clearly illustrates just how disappointingly creepy these baby birds were. Where is the cutesy-pie downy softness? What happened to their fuzzy-wuzzies? I do not feel an urge to koochy-coo these homely birdlets.

Yes, I understand, they’re probably spankin’ fresh newborns — they probably deserve my pity — but I had chickens as a kid and their chicklets popped out of the egg, fluffed their matted fuzz in a warm breeze and phoofed out into an instant urge to be scooped up for a cuddle. I don’t mind saying that I was disappointed in these three baby barn swallows. Can they even hope that their mother loves them?

Go ahead and tell me that you feel any different looking at these practically bald, eye-bulging amoebas with their mama’s down humped up behind them. … And what in hell’s hand basket is that spindly black thing on the left? A wing? Nu-uh, looks like a giant creepy spider leg to me.

I was convinced, within moments of my first viewing of this photo blown up full-sized on my big, uber-resolution monitor, that what we’re seeing here is a genetic mutation experiment gone horribly awry.

This creature, I thought, is the newly formulated, three-bird-headed, downy-backed tarantula, escaped from a secret lab near you. Its bite is venomous, from all three heads, but the one on the left will also eat you (starting with your squishy eyeballs). It can wrap a grown human into a cocoon in under 7 minutes. It travels at speeds up to 44 mph over short distances. It sees in the dark, and it knows where you live.

The face that will haunt your dreams tonight.

Then I saw this last photo. And I haven’t slept well for days.

WTF is that fourth creature at the left of the photo?! Seriously, it can’t be a baby bird. Can it? No way.

That — that thing — must be what’s wrong with all the rest of the picture, and I don’t mean this snapshot. I mean the bigger picture that should be the lovely tweety-bird, zip-a-dee-doo-dah life of the three baby swallows. That thing is some kind of succubus draining the life, the cuteness, the very soft downiness from their beings. I fear now that the little tyke in the first photo was crying for help.

I want to save them, I really do, but I’m afraid to go out there in case that thing is ready to attach itself to a larger, more succulent banquet.

Such as myself at pam[at]viewfromthenorth40.com