Real Conversation:

I pulled over to see if I could capture the sound of songbirds near the junior high a block or two from where I live. I left my car running and was standing several feet away from it with my phone pointed up. 

A neighbor from one of the nearby houses was leaving her house. I saw her come to a creeping crawl not too far from where I was. 

“Hey, what are you doing?” She asked me. Her tone was pretty brash.

Because I was in that kind of mood, I walked quickly and stopped about 10 ft away from her vehicle. 

I turned my phone toward her to show her the interface for the Merlin app.

“I’m a volunteer for the American Wdlife Association. There’s a large tiger running around within a quarter of a mile of here. I was using the app to detect sounds so we could locate it before anything weird happened.”

Her face froze because I said it in the most serious tone I could manage. Oddly, she didn’t say another word to me. Her driver window went up and she drove off.

I waited until she was decently far away before I burst out laughing.

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