She was studying rodent population in the foothills. Analyzing the relationship between the rats, gophers, mice and shrews that co-existed precariously in the parks and vacan't lots and fields. Nocturnal creatures and hard to see. Part of her method was to set up a camera on a runway or tunnel used by rodents in their comings and goings. When the creatures passed by they tripped a switch and had their picture taken.
At first she used an infra red camera, but the detail wasn't good enough.
Not only that, they missed entirely the snakes and toads who also used the runways. Not that she was studying them, but it was nice to know they were there.
The work was tiresome. She disturbed homeless sleepers and had had two cameras stolen. The flash was a dead give-away. Weeks would go by when nothing came out on her photos. She had a thesis to finish and not enough data. Perhaps the rodents had been frightened by the flash and smelled her presence near a runway and stayed away. Hardly likely. She tried a low light video camera set to run for an hour at dawn and an hour at dusk. Nothing. The camera was stolen too.
It was in mid February that she found the goblins. They appeared quite plainly in her photographs. Just a few inches tall but with big, pointed faces and long noses and curly mouths. Little bright eyes with pointy eyebrows. When she called her professor and told him he said they must be gophers. When she insisted he suggested a rest. A week-end at the beach. There was a possible implication there that she did not care to acknowledge.
``They are real,'' she said, ``I know it.''
In the department the photos were enlarged and examined.
``They certainly appear to be rodent like creatures with disarmingly humanoid facial features,'' her advisor said, ``we must trap one.''
Easily said. The goblins went round the traps, or climbed over them. Had their pictures taken doing it.
She decided to sit one whole night by a runway. She fell asleep around two and awoke to find herself nose to nose with a goblin. The goblin appeared angry and was speaking to her in what could have been a language. In any case she didn't understand. Two small goblin children peered from behind the speaker.
``I'm sorry. I don't understand what you're saying,'' she said. The goblin did not understand her either. It occurred to her that perhaps her professor was right. Perhaps these creatures were some sort of bald faced gopher. A new species overlooked by all - or perhaps the country people knew all about them and ate them in stews and barbecued on little sticks - .
She looked at the goblins' mole like hands. Human like hands. She reached out her own toward them and they fled.
With some ingenuity and data manipulation, a weekend at the beach and some excellent new photographs she completed her thesis on time.
The goblins were included as a gopher subspecies, heretofore unknown.