not the rhino
Saturday, May 22, 2004
Some people get their eyes poked out by birds
Here at the lab, I have lots of pets. Not in the house, mind you.
#1: Buffalos. I have lots of pet buffalos. You can see them in a previous post. Well, I guess they're not really my buffalos, but I do say hello to them everyday, so we're sort of developing a bond.
#2: Geese. The lab is pretty much infested with geese. They hang out near the liquid nitrogen tanks, on top of the buildings, and right by my house. Usually, the geese hang out in twos. Apparently, they mate for life.
You can see one such twosome in the pictures below, with some of their baby geese:
In the first picture, the geese are happily swimming along. The second picture, where the goose looks a little less happy, was taken right before I was attacked. No worries -- it didn't really get me.
I'll admit that I underestimated the geese. I was trying to get close to them to take the pictures, and at some point I realized that they might be ... how you say? "not so happy" ... about me getting near the babies. They were hissing up a storm, walking away from me, but I persisted. I kept following them... "I'm bigger than them. I could totally take those geese," I thought. That was until the goose shown close to me in the bottom picture started coming toward me instead of walking away from me. And it was coming fast. It started rushing toward me, beating its wings (which were quite large) loudly and squawking.
I had just a moment to have a flash of insight that what I was doing was really dumb. I tried to get away, while covering my head with my arms, and I guess the goose figured it'd scared me enough that it didn't need to peck out my eyes or anything too drastic. Phew.
Pet #3: We have a huge, fat raccoon that lives near our house. The funny thing about him is that he comes out around 6, 7, 8 pm, when it's still light. We almost named him 'slippery pete' but we realized he's not so slippery, as he bumbles across the grass in broad daylight, so he's 'not-slippery pete,' which contracts nicely into NSP, or just Pete. (NSP is also funny, because there's a theoretical particle called the LSP. Ah! Physics humor.)
Here at the lab, I have lots of pets. Not in the house, mind you.
#1: Buffalos. I have lots of pet buffalos. You can see them in a previous post. Well, I guess they're not really my buffalos, but I do say hello to them everyday, so we're sort of developing a bond.
#2: Geese. The lab is pretty much infested with geese. They hang out near the liquid nitrogen tanks, on top of the buildings, and right by my house. Usually, the geese hang out in twos. Apparently, they mate for life.
You can see one such twosome in the pictures below, with some of their baby geese:
In the first picture, the geese are happily swimming along. The second picture, where the goose looks a little less happy, was taken right before I was attacked. No worries -- it didn't really get me.
I'll admit that I underestimated the geese. I was trying to get close to them to take the pictures, and at some point I realized that they might be ... how you say? "not so happy" ... about me getting near the babies. They were hissing up a storm, walking away from me, but I persisted. I kept following them... "I'm bigger than them. I could totally take those geese," I thought. That was until the goose shown close to me in the bottom picture started coming toward me instead of walking away from me. And it was coming fast. It started rushing toward me, beating its wings (which were quite large) loudly and squawking.
I had just a moment to have a flash of insight that what I was doing was really dumb. I tried to get away, while covering my head with my arms, and I guess the goose figured it'd scared me enough that it didn't need to peck out my eyes or anything too drastic. Phew.
Pet #3: We have a huge, fat raccoon that lives near our house. The funny thing about him is that he comes out around 6, 7, 8 pm, when it's still light. We almost named him 'slippery pete' but we realized he's not so slippery, as he bumbles across the grass in broad daylight, so he's 'not-slippery pete,' which contracts nicely into NSP, or just Pete. (NSP is also funny, because there's a theoretical particle called the LSP. Ah! Physics humor.)
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