Wildlife On The Wrong Side Of The Walls...

[dr_phil_physics]

Monday I happened to be up at my office at the Engineering college when something caught the corner of my eye.

Something Scurrying This Way Comes

Or rather something scurried across the bottom of my doorway in the interior corridor to an office block. I did something of a double-take. Was it a mouse? Are there mice in the engineering building? Well, that's not such a big stretch. Parkview is built atop a hill and is surrounded with something of a nature preserve. Lots of fields and tall decorative grasses. Surely there are mice up here.

Good thing I have a personal rule about keeping food in the office or disposing of food waste in my trash can. While there might be a desperate mouse who wants to feed on a gel-filled wrist rest, or nibble on paper, or even try to make a nest in a nice new shiny ream of printer paper, I'm sure there are better pickings elsewhere.

But I Did Have To Check

So I got up and walked quietly to the door. There was more than a good chance that said mouse would be long gone, or it might've paused at a later doorway. When I did look out my door to the left, though, there it was.

Seemed bigger than a mouse, or at least longer.

Then it turned to the side and I realized that the sleek rounded dark shape wasn't a furry little mammal, but a small dark bird with a short spiky beak. It fluttered away, low to the ground, heading to the bank of windows in the section of open grad student carrels.

Not sure how it got in, though there are large open lab/shops in this wing which keep their outside garage doors open much of the day. And maybe someone would help it find a way out. Or perhaps this is a regular thing and the bird has found an easy way in or out. Who knows?

But it is strange sometimes to see wildlife in inappropriate settings and realize that our control over nature is merely illusionary.

Dr. Phil

Comments

And they get in the better places too

[wendyb-09.livejournal.com]

Spent a week in August at the Sea World Renassiance Hotel, a wonderful property in Orlando with a massive center atrium. Half of the rooms face the outside, the other half open up to the atrium. I woke up several mornings to the sound of birds chirping, and not the fancy show birds that were in the giant cage in the middle of the atrium.

But in fact it was a handful of sparrows and chickadees that had some how gotten into the atrium and set up house. They all seemed quite content and seemed to have learned how to scavange from the leftovers of the guests...balconys populated by children and college students with lots of junk food treasures seemed particularly profitable for them!