In The Shadow Of The Sniper

(CBS)  CBS News National Correspondent Wyatt Andrews, his wife and four children have lived in Northern Virginia for the past 15 years. Here's his look at life in the shadow of the sniper.

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As I gassed my car the other night, I found myself dancing around. Nozzle in the tank, slide to the left. Credit card in the slot. Dodge to the right. There wasn't music in my head inspiring this dance; this was a dance of self-preservation. What was actually in my head was a sick dialog with the sniper. "You may want to shoot me," I was thinking, "but it won't be easy."

The headlines say we in Washington are living in a state of fear. For some, that's true, I'm sure. But for me, that's not quite it. I don't sense the heart-pounding dread of war or riots. I don't feel fear.

I feel like prey.

Which means - around Washington today - you live life looking over your shoulder.

Are there woods across from the Safeway? Don't go there.

Is my child exposed on his walk to the bus? Let's drive and walk him in.

The atmosphere is surreal. On the radio every morning, after the sniper-dominated headlines, are reports on how to handle the daily routine.

"Experts say if you have to go shopping, just zig-zag on your walk into the store!" was the helpful tip last Friday on all-news WTOP. Welcome to the new day; here's how not to die.

What is remarkable is that this sense of being hunted is happening in a metro area whose citizens are accustomed to a baseline of danger. We already operate in the world's crosshairs.

Terrorists attacked the Pentagon. That's family. We handled it.

Anthrax hit the Post Office and the Senate. We handled that, too.

President Bush warns of Iraqi drones overhead, dispersing mayhem.

The point is, threats to D.C. come with the landscape. And yet nothing we've been forced to handle so far has so starkly changed our routines. Nothing al Qaeda did made us escort our children to school, or dance at the gas pump as we talk silently, in our heads, with our invisible predator.

At the same time, I don't want to make this too melodramatic. What we feel is nothing close to the real pain and the real suffering being inflicted on the victims and their families. What this is, is a first-time, hard-to-believe, gut-level sense of being in the jungle.

We are the gazelles at the water hole, behaving skittishly, hoping the movement in the bush is just the wind.

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E-mail your questions and comments to
Wyatt Andrews.