Ha so this is a temporary post just so I get tonight's events in order as I remember them: I turn around and notice a man and a lady yelling at each other. All I hear is "Don't fucking spit on my friend" and a bunch of profanity. I mention to Casey and Patti, who are behind us, that it looks like things are going to get nasty, mostly jokingly. Then out of nowhere she slugs him and he try to hit her back. Casey, the hero, maneuvers him out of the ARC and into the courtyard before he can respond. I stay inside trying to figure out what happened, until I hear a commotion outside and go out to see what the deal is. There's lots of yelling and pushing, and I can't quite make out who is against who, but I see Richard screaming at some guy, who is screaming back. I ask Kirsten what's going on and she says to please get Richard inside before he gets punched in the face. I grab his arm and say "Richard, please go inside, I really think this dude is going to hit you," to which he responds "It's fine. I've done this before. He won't hit me." But right then the guy takes off his leather jacket and I say "Richard, even if you think you are totally fine, go inside," and he does. Then I finally see the guy who got hit in the face, and he is gushing blood from his mouth. Long story short: cops get called. Lots of minor near-skirmishes, but everything calms down. I may clear up this account in the morning, but I may not. Oh yeah: and the best quote of the evening went to the beaten who said, "If my girlfriend was here, she'd kick the shit out of you."

Also, so I don't forget, the legitimate sober quotation of the day goes to:
"Owls actually have ears that are asymmetrically placed on their heads. So they have an ear up here, and an ear down here. This let's them hunt at using nothing but sound."
"Sounds like my first wife."
What I wish I could say "What the fuck does that even mean, sir. Does your wife really have ears that increase her sense of hearing to superhuman levels? If so, she was a keeper."
What I actually said: "Ha."

More trouble in the dorms.

So just this very second I hear sobbing at my door and frantic knocking. I get up and a young woman is standing there crying so hard I can barely understand her. But I make out "throw" "hit" "boyfriend" and "911" so I call 911 and hand her the phone. She says she wants to report a domestic dispute and that she's scared that her boyfriend is coming for her, all the while staring terrifiedly at the end of the hall, since, she tells the 911 operator, he boyfriend may still be after her. So holy shit get inside my room, lady. I motion her inside but she refuses, either too scared to think straight,or not entirely trusting of men at the moment, so I just have to hope that he is not in fact still after her. Of course this is partially my fault since looking at me in my boxers and T-shirt with Pong paused on the computer screen she probably thought that this tough, strong stranger who is obviously trained in the martial art of Street Fighter 4 could protect her. As I listen to her tell her story, I can see red marks on her shoulders and back, which I learn are from being pelted with bottles, shoes, and whatever other things her boyfriend could grab. She's about 5'2" and can't weigh more than 100lbs, so unless her boyfriend is one of the many 6th graders I've met at Magic The Gathering tournaments, she is pretty lucky to have gotten away with just bruises. The rest of her story was pretty confused, but the one part that stuck out was she said she ran out of the room and her boyfriend tackled her to the ground. Some other SJ resident opened the door to see what was going on, so her boyfriend pretended to be helping her up and said "She's fine," at which the SJ denizen just said "Ok" and closed the door. I'd like to believe that he was actually suspicious and decided to call the police just in case, but somehow I doubt it. So she waited in front of my door until the 911 operator said the police had arrived at the front door. So I tensely escorted her the the main entrance, and I noticed she paused at every corner until I was completely beyond it. And so goes the continuing adventures at the SJ dorms.

Tourists say the darnest things

Basic biology problems:

• “How can you tell if a bird can reproduce asexually?”
• “What do the birds think we are?”
• “How do you know how much birdseed to feed to an eagle?”
• “Do they regrow their bones like starfish?”
• “What is the difference between a bald eagle and a raven?”
• Standing in the middle of the courtyard: “Where do you keep all the raptors?”
• “Do bald eagles like apples?”
• “Aren't owls in the same family as chickens?”
• “You mentioned that they aren't extinct anymore...”

You ain't from around here are you?

• “Where do you have the bald eagles that are just in the trees?”
• “This is a pretty civilized place.”
• “Are the Russians sorry they sold Alaska to the US?”
• “Where is the bridge that humpbacks swim under?”

Whoops:

• “Boris is so.... majestical.”
• “Is he a female?”
• “My friend beat off an eagle.... it was attacking his cat.”
• “Can you fondle her... head.”
• “The last one starts with a 'k'” “Condor!” *facepalm*
  

Socio-political:

• “You know why the weather is like this don't you? Because Obama is ignoring Jerusalem.”
• “Can you believe that redneck bullshit?”
• “So... do you guys grow really good smoke up here?”
• “Volta loves to eat rats.” “Send him to Washington DC!”
  

Wait.... what?

• “Do eagles fledge?”
• “Which bird was raised by seagulls?”
• About Katzeek- “I just... really want to play balloon volleyball with him.”
• At the Booth -“Are you the special guy?”
• “What is your walking trail?”
• “What kind of skin do eagles have?”

And, of course, "other:"

• “Whoever said orange is the new pink was fucking out of their mind.”
• “Can I go to the bathroom?” - after "Does anyone have any questions?"
• “Shut up, Sam, you're going to make me go into labor!”
• “Yeah I backed over one of these once. I put it in my freezer. It stopped flapping in about an hour.”
• “You know that sound that raptors made in Jurassic Park? Was that accurate?"
• “Our dog just died. Can you guys use the meat for the birds?”
• As video is playing “Are you guys going to play us a video soon?”
• “No no, that man is a rapper.”

One thing it can be hard for people to get is that bird are not people and have an entirely different set of standards for their mental and physical health. One somewhat comical example of this was a woman who was trying to convince me that we should increase the leafy greens component of our birds diet. The conversation went something like this:
"So how much of their diet is things like nuts and berries?"
"Actually none. [I say 'actually' a lot. It's kind of a filler word that sounds better than 'ummmm']. Most of our birds are entirely carnivorous, and eat nothing but meat."
"Well do you ever give them a choice?"
"Nope. We feed all of our birds nothing but meat."
"But vegetables are good for you!"
(getting a little bit annoyed) "Not for birds of prey. In the wild they eat nothing but meat, so that's what we give them here."
"Well you should at least give them a choice! It's cruel not to. Everybody knows that vegetables are good for you!"
"Actually, most birds of prey cannot digest cellulose very well, and if they ate too much of it, they would die."
The conversation actually went on for a couple minutes after that, in which the lady just refused to believe that raptors bodies worked any differently from her own.

(A quick story about the opposite problem: I had a lady the other day who believe that birds were completely different from people. She asks whether or not birds could regenerate bones "like a starfish," whether they had red blood, and whether or not they had hearts. It was like she thought they were some sort of gigantic invertebrates.)

A much more common complaint we get is about the birds in the weathering yard, which are tethered down for eight hours a day for their own safety. We get lots of people who will actually shout at us telling us how cruel it is and how horrible we are for doing it (e.g. crazy French lady from a few posts down.) So I do the whole routine about them being three different species, and how it's healthier than being inside all day, but the main point is that birds of prey really do spend most of their time just perched in one place. If they are not hunting or traveling from one place to the other, they really don't fly at all. They hunt for their own food, and sometimes they will fail for long periods of time, so it is much better to conserve energy. I then point out that they do not strain at their leashes, and tell them to look at all of our untethered birds, none of which are moving. But they'll have none of it. I often make the joke that I'm tied out here, unable to leave, for just as long as they are, and I don't even have the option of just not cooperating that day (our birds sometimes don't come out if they simply don't want to), but I always forget that it's a terrible idea to joke with someone at the height of righteousness.

These are also the same people who comment that our birds "look sad." I always do the the little "sad and happy don't really apply to these birds as much as 'safe and endangered' and 'full and hungry'" but I sometimes just want to scream "Look lady. How do you think you can tell that? They don't even have any face muscles! Sitka their has her leg up, her feathered poofed, and she looks just as happy as happy can be. And do you really think we would want our birds to be 'unhappy'? We're a BALD EAGLE HOSPITAL. Would I have flown 4000 miles and being standing out here in the 50 degree August rain if I didn't care about birds?" Maybe on my last day.

But I admit that we sometimes don't help things on tours. Especially with the hyper-empathetic type that I mentioned in my previous post, it's hard not to try to make the birds more human to connect better with people. A lot of things are just more easily communicated in human terms, but I try to do the best that I can to emphasize that these are just shorthand for much more complex animal behaviors.

But more seriously it can be hard sometimes not to anthropomorphize the birds in order to