Sharing a snack with a furry friend
It’s been a long-time goal of mine to feed a squirrel by hand in a Mary Poppins fashion, but I only seemed to encounter approachable squirrels on campus when I had no food.
I was rushing across the Diag a week before spring break, though, when my luck changed. A friendly looking squirrel was following me and I had an apple in hand. My time had come.
I was flooded with emotions and questions – are apples too big for squirrels? What if he didn’t like it? Was rabies in my future? Despite my nervousness and the blistering cold, the squirrel and I had made eye contact, so there was no turning back.
I broke a few pieces of apple and set them on the ground. By his third helping, my new friend was coming close and lovingly touching his paws to my fingers. I was scared, but so charmed that I gave him another piece. After he bit me on the finger, I reluctantly ended snack time. While he bounded behind me on my way to class, I finished the rest of the apple myself.
Sara Lynne Thelen
Uncharitable giving
My friend and I were walking around Kerrytown one night to take a break from studying.
Feeling hunger pains, I peered inside Zingerman’s and saw employees cleaning up, so I knocked on the door to see if I could score a couple free bagels. I must have sounded especially pitiful in my begging, because when the worker returned, he bore a bag of six bagels, another half a dozen pastries, and a glass of Coke. The sweet, charitable look my friend and I had must have the Zingerman’s employees that we were homeless.
The free food suddenly became not worth it, though, when several days later, sipping a large green tea and typing away on my laptop, I met eyes with the same worker. The shock in his expression was too much to bear.
Gabe Rivin
Lloyd on the loose
Killing time between classes yesterday outside the Fishbowl, someone tapped me on the shoulder. Turning around, I found Lloyd Carr and a camera crew asking if I would like to do an interview. I giddily obliged.
Coach Carr asked what I was doing, and looking at my computer screen in horror, I saw that, instead of the article on Italian neo-realist film I had been reading, my screen displayed a crappy online game I was playing.
I tried to qualify my response by saying there wasn’t much going on the first day after break. Coach Carr, always a class act, just chuckled and asked more questions. While it was exhilarating to meet him, I was pretty intimidated. He won a National Championship. I have a high school swimming coaching record of 5-36.
James Graessle