A funny story in three photos. A few weekends ago, during my normal wildlife photo walks in the wetlands, I came upon a raccoon walking through the pines. He was cautious of me, but not scared off - he initially hid behind a tree a bit, then poked out to see if I was a threat:
Once he assumed I wasn't, he started to walk out from behind the tree to walk past me - we were only about 10 feet from each other. However, as he came out behind the tree and started to walk closer, he was so busy keeping eyes up on me that he wasn't watching where he was stepping...and there was something sitting on the ground camouflaged in the fallen leaves. I saw it, and knew it was there...I had just snapped a closeup of a lovely 2-foot-long green iguana with bits of orange coloration:
But the raccoon didn't see it as it was too busy eyeing me. Unfortunately I was in heavy shade and I had a slow shutter speed - plenty for shooting a slow raccoon and a still iguana, but not nearly fast enough for what happened next.
As I was readying to take another shot of the raccoon, it stepped forward and placed a foot directly on the tail of the iguana. Just as I pressed the shutter, the iguana leapt out from the leaves and whipped its tail to scurry away, and the raccoon positively exploded in fear:
The raccoon jumped backwards and flipped over in a reverse cartwheel, eyes popping out of its head. In the pic above, you can just see the end of the iguana's tail in the lower left corner of the frame as it whips away. The poor raccoon tried to recover, panting with its teeth out, looking at me like it was my fault.
Though I wish I had adjusted my shutter speed for the moment, had I anticipated it, I still actually like the blurry mess of a photo, because it will always remind me of that funny moment!