Nature for the Win
I hate Thursdays. Kind of a lot, actually. I usually have class and work from 8 to 5, mostly non-stop, with a couple of minutes to scramble on or off campus and find time to eat. And, in addition to that, I have anatomy lecture with my least favorite professor (ever) immediately followed by three hours of anatomy lab, after which I have to come home and bathe assiduously in order not to smell like dead shark.
But then today, as I was leaving my lecture and headed to the dark basement room where we cut up housecats, something wonderful happened. I looked across the South Oval and noticed a bunch of people lined up on the edge of the bike lane, looking at something. I assumed it had something to do with the preachers that have been there the last couple of weeks, but there was no preacher in evidence. And then I noticed the huge bird standing in the grass.
There was a juvenile red-tail hawk, standing atop the fat red squirrel he had evidently just slain, and looking quite confused as to the gaggle of people accruing around him. The people just kept coming, until there were more than a hundred students staring at the hawk, which was looking around as if wondering whether he would have to leave his prize behind to make a quick getaway. After several minutes, during which the crowd maintained a hushed silence, he took off. And the crowd erupted in cheers and applause.
It took him several hundred feet to get any significant distance from the ground, apparently struggling with the weight of the fat campus squirrel. And I had to move on to a much less-inspiring class period wherein I dissected a sheep's heart, though it was a little better than it otherwise might have been as a result of my brush with nature. I think the best thing about the whole thing was that so many people besides me had stopped to gaggle. It gives me hope that there are still a few people who care about nature.
But then today, as I was leaving my lecture and headed to the dark basement room where we cut up housecats, something wonderful happened. I looked across the South Oval and noticed a bunch of people lined up on the edge of the bike lane, looking at something. I assumed it had something to do with the preachers that have been there the last couple of weeks, but there was no preacher in evidence. And then I noticed the huge bird standing in the grass.
There was a juvenile red-tail hawk, standing atop the fat red squirrel he had evidently just slain, and looking quite confused as to the gaggle of people accruing around him. The people just kept coming, until there were more than a hundred students staring at the hawk, which was looking around as if wondering whether he would have to leave his prize behind to make a quick getaway. After several minutes, during which the crowd maintained a hushed silence, he took off. And the crowd erupted in cheers and applause.
It took him several hundred feet to get any significant distance from the ground, apparently struggling with the weight of the fat campus squirrel. And I had to move on to a much less-inspiring class period wherein I dissected a sheep's heart, though it was a little better than it otherwise might have been as a result of my brush with nature. I think the best thing about the whole thing was that so many people besides me had stopped to gaggle. It gives me hope that there are still a few people who care about nature.
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