I drove a T-post into the dam of my catfish pond a few feet from a beaver trail leading over/across the dam from one pond to another. I installed a trail cam on the post. The idea was to do a time and motion analysis of the beaver's transits, i.e. what time of day or night did they favor for crossing the dam. This way I could arrive early and provide armed intervention (welcoming committee.)

So a week or 10 days later I pull the camera and download the pix for analysis. I got 37 pix, some in the daytime and some at night. The daytime pix showed no animals of any kind and I assume birds triggered the IR motion detector. The night pix were mostly devoid of animal life but there were a few with coon tails in them. It seems the coons were using the beaver trail and as they strolled by they triggered the motion detector. The flash pix are not triggered instantaneously as there is a brief delay to charge up the flash's high voltage before the picture is taken. During this delay the "target" often got out of the frame altogether but in some instances I got pix of their tales, in one instance nearly a whole body profile (minus the head) and in two cases got pix of the little buggers "mugging" the camera.

So why mug the camera? I think the high voltage inverter circuit that charges the flash puts out a high frequency whine that the raccoons can hear (above my range of hearing) and as they are just strolling along the beaver trail they hear a high pitched whine and look to see where it is coming from just in time to get flashed in the face and get their picture taken.