Here's a toucanet to get you interested. It was soft and silky. I know that because OH, THAT RIGH THERE HOLDING IT UP IS MY HAND!! I GOT TO TOUCH IT!! I GOT TO TOUCH IT!!!
On Monday my Systematics class got shown around the Faculty's zoology museum (museum as in collection of stuffed raccoons and speared butterflies kept in cabinets, not museum as in stuff on display for a Saturday visit and a picnic afterwards). I always thought you had to handle stuffed specimens with the utmost care, lest you snap off a claw or poke a hole in a wing, but my teacher was picking up birds, poking them, and passing them around like nothing.
Actually, he picked up a woodpecker and, to demonstrate how loud it could be when carving the fancy wooden panels and balustrade for its bird-house, began banging its beak against a cabinet right over my head (he was right, they're loud).
It wasn't all fun and desecrating bird bodies, though. It's saddening as well. Like when we were shown a beautiful, HUGE woodpecker: an Imperial Woodpecker. The largest in the world, in fact, except they're extinct.
I didn't get a picture of the woodpecker. Here's a roseate spoonbill to make it up to you.
My teacher is an ornithologist, so 80% of what he showed us was birds. He didn't even start with the mammals until there was a general clamor for furry things. "You want to see furry animals? Instead of these beautiful birds? Fine!" and he pulled out a drawer full of rats.
And you know what the AWESOMEST part is? Their freezer broke!! DO YOU KNOW WHAT THIS MEANS!?
"Ah," you might say if you're a bit slow, "their waffles will thaw so they'll have to eat them soon. There will be a waffle party!"
No! That's silly. Who would share their waffles? No, the freezer broke– the freezer where they keep animals that are dead but not yet gutted, stuffed, etc. SO they need to fix them up before they decompose. So they need help. They need... newbie students who are willing to handle rotting corpses!
And that's where I come in. When I finish this post, I'll get ready and leave. Whee.
ALBATROSS! Get it on a stick!
This pelican was massive. A girl almost got smacked in the face when the prof picked it up.
I took the above pictures with my crappy phone camera. They don't really do justice to the real things, but just so you have an idea, I included some birds (the other pictures didn't turn out at all. Like the bats and the raccoon, which is a pity).
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Anyway, this has turned into a boring list rather than an interesting snapshot of my life meant for posterior examination.
Since I really liked the Potato Peel Pie book, I started on Anne Frank's diary. Embarrassingly, I've never read it. I do know the basic plot, though:
Anne Frank is 12 or so, calls her diary "Kitty", lives for a few years shut up in an attic with her family and others– according to Angela from My So-called Life, there's "a guy she really liked" there, too, so there's room for some romance or at least sexual tension here– and can't make any noise (they have to sneeze into pillows) lest someone hear them and figure out that they're there. They get found, though, after a few years, and are taken to a concentration camp where Anne dies when she's 14 or so.
I'm about 50 pages in, and at first I thought Anne was a bit conceited, but now I'm thinking maybe it was her age (except that when I was an tween I didn't think quite so highly of myself. But then, I don't think much of myself now either, so I'm biased).
*Someday when I'm old and withered I'll read this and marvel at how five years could be described as "ages". But five years ago I was thirteen and not quite the same as who I am now (much more sullen and cynical, I was back then. But I often wonder, if I could go back in time as I am now and meet my younger selves, would they like me? Would they be glad I didn't turn into a dithering ninny? I have, actually, a bit. But of course I wouldn't dither in front of them.)
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