Bemused

It doesn’t seem logical that biology class + essay question + poetry = A on test. However, it works. At least, it worked for me. My bio professor is determined to teach us life biology, not the lame text book “this is a cell” cliche course that students have to suffer through over and over. He’s also adamant that we be creative and express our individuality. Therefore, our midterms consist of an essay question on material covered in class or in the out of class reading. The only stipulation is that you have to answer the question fully--other than that, anything goes.
That being the case, when the last midterm rolled around, I decided to do something a little bit out of the norm. I’d gotten very little sleep the night before due to a very busy day and an anthropology paper, so I wasn’t feeling up to writing a technical brief on a paper about bat hawks that I had read but not internalized. I vaguely recalled two of the statistics from the paper, so armed with those nebulous facts and a little bit of luck, I went to work on my midterm and 40 minutes later ended up with this:

Question: Why could bat hawks be said to be living a precarious existence?

Dusk falls
a cave breathes forth fluttering shreds of midnight
the bats tumble into the air like musicians on a stage
warming up their symphony of noiseless sound
Death strikes quickly on feathered wings
a hawk scythes through the swirling cloud
plucking choice morsels from the boughs of night
and devouring them
six seconds from talon to stomach
Fast food, indeed
Seven times the hawk reaps its harvest of chiroptera
in twice as many deadly passes
Some courses, though caught, are deemed too unwieldy or spirited
to eat on the wing
and plummet to earth
mute and crumpled testimonies to a picky eater
Soon the dinner rush ends as dinner rushes out
to deal death to smaller winged creatures of the night
The hawk’s window of opportunity closes
as evanescent as a moonbeam
that in-between time when the world slips into slumber
and the netherworld creeps into its place
Tonight the hawk will rest content
full of bats too slow to evade their end
But tomorrow?

In any normal bio class the professor would think I was crazy for writing poetry. Dr. Black’s comment? “Delightful.”

Cell phone follies

This is a pretty common scene from my life:

Jenny sits peacefully on her bed doing homework in a still room.
Cell phone: BEEP!! (Alarm for whatever Jenny is baking)
Jenny: AHHHHH!!!! She screams, flails around wildly for a few seconds in surprise, and nearly falls off the bed. If she happens to be holding her phone when it makes noise, she will almost throw it when startled. This behavior is usually followed by several minutes of laughter from Jenny and any roommates within earshot.

Hey, at least I'm entertaining when I'm spastic, right? This happened twice tonight--and it's significantly more startling when you're holding the phone than when it just vibrates in your pocket. Which, of course, I was doing when it rang. Bother.