Big Bird's got nothing on these guys . . .

A brief word:

I decided to spend my afternoon after my internship walking through Kensington Gardens. It's almost ridiculous that I've been here for over a month and didn't bother to go walking through one of London's renowned gardens already. Ah well, I did yesterday, and I got some interesting stuff out of it. One, I went to the duck pond where all the water birds get together and plot how to take over the world and - okay, not 'plot to take over the world' exactly, but they had to be up to something. These birds are so utterly not afraid of humans. In fact they'll attack you if you start feeding them bread crumbs and then run out. The swans there are ENORMOUS. Seriously, their heads come up to my waist and they could probably knock down anyone under five feet just by flapping their wings. And they're jerks. Yep, the prima donnas of the pond. They pose when people take pictures of them.

I was surprised to find that there were Canadian geese, among other breeds, and they were thoroughly outnumbered. In the States they're everywhere, and hostile if you approach them. Trust me. But here they do their best to stay out of other birds' way.

They are Canadian, though. I guess you can't be that surprised. That was my bad political joke for the day.

Another funny incident was when this terrier, whose owner let him off the leash, had an encounter with a squirrel. The squirrel was about five feet away from a tree, so it had a means of retreat if the dog chased after him. Instead of bolting after it, though, the dog tried to creep up on it with nothing to hide behind. So, of course, the squirrel sees him coming, but decides it's not worth his concern, and just keeps on searching the spot for food. This encounter lasts about ten minutes with the dog starting and stopping in his approach, and sometimes forced to hold a pose like a pointer for two minutes. The affair ends a bit anticlimactically because the squirrel ends up bounding over to another tree and climbing it while the poor dog just watches. I guess I'd expect more diligence and stealth from a larger breed of dog. Certainly not from a terrier. They're renown yappers who think barking at their prey will convince it to come down. It was a little sad to see it didn't break out into a chase, but Mother Nature likes to throw us for a loop a little too often.


Well, gotta get more of that reading done. Another novel by Sir Walter Scott and Hugh Trevor-Roper's The Invention of Scotland. It's interesting and all, but . . . when it's schoolwork, I find myself more reluctant to do it. No rare disease, I'm sure, but it's still unhelpful. And I still have a paper to write and no idea what to write it on. :P





"People who say they don't care what people think are usually desperate to have people think they don't care what people think." - George Carlin