Wildlife photography could, perhaps, sometimes be dangerous - but apparently so can wildflower photography.

Cheryl Woodcock, 49, didn't know she was about to feel a whole lot of physical pain just by taking a picture of a prairie wildflower out in the country near Baldwin.

That's because, for the moment, she didn't know what she was lying on.

"I was like 'ow,' " Woodcock said, remembering when the pain, and then more pains, started.

"She likes to lie on ant hills," said her husband, Edmond Woodcock, joking about the incident.

It's not known at what speed this wildflower photographer reached as she was peeling off clothes, running home toward a shower, but she remembers topping out at her maximum velocity.

"There were a lot of ants," she said.

Woodcock won't be bringing any ants with her this week, just wildlife shots, cards and framed prints, as well as her homemade dog treats, when she participates for the first time in Mandan's Art in the Park event, part of the city's July 4th celebration.

Art in the Park takes place downtown on both sides of Five Nations Art, 401 Main St. W., from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. on Tuesday and from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Wednesday. There will be 32 new vendors this year, a total of 142 from 15 states, said Karla Boehm recently, who's on the Art in the Park committee. There also will be chain-saw art demonstrations throughout both days.

Woodcock's "real" job is being a customer service representative for a corporation, working out of the home that she and Edmond Woodcock built nine years ago on 80 acres near a creek north of Baldwin. And it's where the animal-loving Woodcocks have herds, several herds. And flocks. There are, among other animals, chickens who live in a piece of art, a coop she painted to look like a cottage with a scary large chicken on one side. There are 20 sheep, nine horses, five dogs, nine cats, a miniature donkey, a llama that needed a home and a motherless calf that neighbors begged her to take and save. And inside the house, there are several caged birds, the occasionally wandering cat and sometimes sickly lambs in pens near the breakfast bar. That's the way Woodcock, who once aspired to be a vet, likes it.

"This isn't a house for show,"she said. "This is a place well lived in."

In addition to customer servicing and animal tending, other things have evolved.

She started cooking up homemade dog treats about five years ago after her husband bought her a gift of two Scottish terrier pups, and she found out that breed can be prone to food allergies. On boxes of commercial dog treats, there were ingredients she couldn't recognize or pronounce, and so she started creating her own recipes and making her own - varieties such as cheesy garlic, milk and honey, and peanut butter and banana.

Now, the business, licensed by the state and called Farmer Tilly's Homemade Dog Treats named after a favorite cat is keeping the kitchen busy and crammed. Except for the two slow months, January and February, she bakes about every day, a three- to four-hour dough-and-cutting process. Then there's baking them at 350 degrees for 40 minutes in the commercial oven in the garage and then letting them dry for 18 hours.

That results in about eight cookie sheets full. But she said she still has trouble keeping up with the demand in the two local businesses that carry her product and for monthly craft fairs and other events.

She has acquired commercial food equipment, such as the 4-foot-tall pizza dough press that stands in the middle of the kitchen, a dough sheeter and a commercial-sized mixer taking up floor space. Lots of things to bump into when family members want to use the kitchen for normal kitchen activities. So the plan is to move everything into the garage, once the middle stall of the three-stall garage is turned into her shop.

Meanwhile, there are other projects.

Her wildflower-photo business, called Wild on the Prairie, started about a year ago after teachers at a local school lauded the thank-you notes she gave them - cards with Woodcock's wildflower shots on them.

Woodcock took up photography about 20 years ago and along the way has won ribbons at Bob's Photo photography contests for portraits of her children, but she found herself gravitating toward taking pictures of wildflowers, which she's no expert in. She said she doesn't even recognize some until she looks them up in her flower book. And there's always more to look up. Things don't stay the same in her pasture. Different flowers come up, depending on how dry or wet the year, she's discovered. She's intrigued by the intricacy and delicateness of the flowers. But she especially loves crocuses.

"Growing up, it was the first sign of spring,"she said about growing up north of Bismarck. "Dad would come walking in with a crocus for mom."

Now her crocuses become cards and mounted prints, Woodcock doing the whole process herself.

She can do it all, it seems. So many things in so little time.

It's like she has ants in her pants.

(Reach reporter Virginia Grantier at 250-824 or at virginia.grantier@;bismarcktribune.com.)