Last night a friend and I went out to the middle of the desert to photograph and watch the Leonids meteor shower. We drove for over an hour through a small town called Pahrump and parked to the side of a two lane road. After our eyes adjusted to the nothingness of the middle of the desert and the ambient light of Las Vegas over 50 miles away, we sat and watched the night sky. Beautiful, blinding streaks of green amazed us, along with the slower smaller blue/white of small meteors. Soon, I was motivated enough to take out my camera and photograph. Unfortunately, my equipment and my knowledge on photographing night skies are limited, therefore I was unable to capture the complete and utter vast awesomeness of the constellations. Later, just after clicking down the shutter for another long exposure shot on the roof of my friends car, I heard a snarl just outside our little circle of safety on the side of the road. My body froze rigidly. "Did you hear that?" I asked my friend in an almost shouted whisper. "Oh, it was just my flashlight scraping against the ground," my friend assured me. My body relaxed slightly and I mentally laughed at myself for being so paranoid. "Wait... no it wasn't," he said with more force. Then, we heard the growl/snarl again. It was filled with venom and wild aggression. As we looked at each other wide-eyed in the darkness. He asked me, "do you want to go?" "Shine your flashlight over there," I said hoping to scare whatever it was away. Mentally answers shot through my synapses as to what my answer to him should be 'no!' 'I want to look a the stars' 'I don't want to leave!' "Yes!" I shouted at him. With the surprising speed of two people who've tapped into their primal "flight" instinct we gathered our equipment and shot towards the car. I slammed the passenger door while my friend shoved his equipment into the back seat. "GET IN THE CAR! GET IN THE CAR!" I shouted over and over nervously laughing at my own fear and the excitement of not knowing what was threatening to attack. After what seemed like too long, he jumped into the drivers seat next to me and said, "let's go!" He flipped his car lights on, turned the engine and we sped back to the city. The whole drive back we were laughing, amazed at what the hell just happened: why we attracted some desert predator and why it sounded so aggressive when we hadn't done anything to provoke it; reliving the moment again and again as we retold each other our reactions; amused at how much like a scene from a movie the whole scenario was. We never saw what it was growling at us from the darkness. Probably a coyote, though I've never known them to get so close to humans and be so aggressive. But it was definitely one of the more scary moments of my life.