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Everybody asks me the same questions said Walt Disney cocking his right eyebrow half quizzically, half defiantly for all the world like Donald Duck himself. How do we get those motion pictures of fruit ripenig and flowers opening, and the private lives of microscopic insects? And those on the spot shots of wild animals stalking each other — in the Arctic, the deserts the jungles — even under the sea?

“It must take fantastic patience,” I said. “Courage, too.”

“Plenty of courage,” said Walt. “We've got man-and-wife teams that hunt lions and tigers with nothing but cameras. No professional hunters with elephant guns standing by to bail ’em out if they get into trouble, The Crislers, Herb and Lois, stalked a grizzly with her cubs and got away only by a miracle when she turned on them. It takes a real mountaineer to climb after Rocky Mountain sheep, but Crisler did it — and with all his camera equipment, too — while Lois climbed right up after him and, just for the hell of it, photographed him photographing the sheep crashing into each other head-on.

“And how do we get those hair-raising fights to the death like the hawk killing the rattler in The Living Desert? ..."

I interrupted. “That’s patience.”

“No,” said Walt. “Patience is what you have when you are waiting downstairs for your wife to get dressed. Take the Milottes over there,” and he pointed across the  Disney cafeteria. “When they photographed Prowlers of the Everglades they waited six weeks beside an alligator’s egg until it hatched. For 40 days they watched herons, waiting for one to catch a fish close enough to be photographed. You might call that patience — but I call it interest.”

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