I know this is late but I wanted to share one of the humorous things that has happened to me in FM over the last 15 years. I am at a mid size university and one day while working in the main lobby of the science building I heard a sound like cleats on stone and when I turned around I thought I was going to be chewing out one of the athletes but instead I saw a young lady leading a goat on a leash across the lobby floor (yes a goat, not a little petting zoo type but a full grown large goat). Needless to say I was stunned and could do nothing but watch her cross the lobby and disappear into an elevator. When I could compose myself I went to find her to remind the young lady about our no animals in the building policy but she had disappeared.
A day later I was telling the tale to one of the faculty and he sheepishly admitted she was in his class. Before I could tell him it was a bad idea he stopped me and said she brought it in as a show and tell as they had been talking about the digestive systems in mammals. He also said he and the class were punished bad enough as the goat had a bad case of gas that day and they had to suffer through the smell. I figured he was right and let it go at that....
Reality kind of wobbles a bit in those moments, doesn't it?
(laugh) yes it does, but on a college campus reality is a moving target at times.
I had an interesting wildlife incident happen to me. While tracing some ductwork on the tar and gravel roof of my assigned cleanroom building in San Jose, CA, I was startled by a bird flopping away across the roof and shrieking as if injured. Turns out it was a Killdeer that was protecting its nest by feigning injury to draw predators away from its nest of piled up gravel. They typically build nests in gravel near creeks and lakes, but the roof of a building seemed like a perfect gravel patch to this bird pair. I brought a Polaroid camera (this was in the 80's before digital cameras) up later and got a couple of pictures of the birds and stuck them in my Audobon book when I identified the species.
Nice one for your Life List, Steven! Do Killdeer return to nesting sites? I'm wondering if they became a regular sight, though a hot roof seems less homey than a nice creek or lake to me.