The invisible elk

Sometimes on my way to work I ride through a little grassy wash at the tip of a canyon where mule deer nest for the night. I often startle them as I ride over the ill defined trail and head up the other side of the canyon.

Yesterday I was clanking along when I felt a large presence rise along side me. I cleared the rocky bit and looked up the trail to see a huge bull elk with a giant rack of antlers staring down the trail at me. We kind of stood there for some minutes as time contracted and I started to try to figure out my options if mr elk decided to walk over me.

It occurred to me that this possibly was blog gold, either with a photo or a story of getting trampled not 100 feet from a major road, so I fished out my cell phone to snap a grainy pic of the majestic beast. As I reached into my bike saddle bag for the phone, the elk slowly turned and trotted up the trail.

I followed quickly wielding the phonecam ahead of me to snap at will and spotted the beast standing 20 feet off the trail, again looking right at me.

I snapped a photo and a few moments later the elk tired of the game and trotted back up the canyon. Here is my evidence:


Go ahead, click on the image for flickr and view it big.

So somewhere above there is an elk. A big one, with big antlers. I swear. It is, if I rely on my imperfect memory, facing the camera. I am guessing it is either on the left under the sun, or on the right in the dense trees, but it should be there. I can't find it though. Maybe it is only visible to people with polarized sunglasses? Maybe only I can see it?

It is not too common to see elk in or near town at this time of year, in fact, this is the first elk I have seen below 8000 feet since 2003. Just my luck that it turned out to be an invisible one. Maybe a predator elk newly arrived from a distant star to hunt humans?