The net was laying in my Vera Bradley school bag. My breakfast had completed itself relatively quickly, and I now had ample time to walk down to the second floor of Olin and return the net I had "borrowed" to clean Flip-Turn's tank. The iPod rarely ever listened to was powering my morning jaunts. I was in an exceptionally good mood. The phrase, "I'm in love and I want everyone to know it!" Kept ringing in my ears, so fervently, so realistically, that I expected the world around me to transform into a musical at anytime. Everything felt so good, it was a beautiful day, with wet snow clinging fiercely to trees, and raining down like tufts of powdered sugar whenever the wind blew a little too hard. It was too early for any classes to be in session, so I met no one as I walked into the building and down the stairs.
I had recently decided to be a marine biologist, and as I looked around Olin, the main biology building, I thought about all the classes I would be taking there. There was a huge wall full of stuffed birds from around the world. There was always one really amusing one, posed to lay on its side, with slightly webbed feet. It looked so relaxed. "That is clearly an aquatic bird" I thought, and pointed at it, as if it would crack a joke, or start tap-dancing or something. The wall directly across it held posters with experiment results and the Biology t-shirt, which said, "We do it like they do on the Discovery Channel". I thought majoring in biology alone would be worth that shirt. It was so catchy, so funny, so relevant. I turned the corner.
There was a janitor's cart in the hallway, and I quickly ducked in to my lab room to avoid being seen and getting asked potentially awkward questions. I moved to the far side of the room where I had originally picked up the net and placed it delicately on a prong. There were two large tubs of salt water that contained differing types of marine creatures. Glancing over them quickly, I noticed a large group of feather dusters that I hadn't noticed the last time we had been in the classroom. I ducked down to get a better look so that I was on eye-level with them.
Feather dusters are sessile marine worms. They belong to the group Polychaete. They have fleshy extensions called parapodia which they stick out into the water, and when they feel something large connect with their feathery limbs, they quickly suck them in, capturing, or potentially avoiding, whatever had caused the disturbance. In the wild, feather dusters are the main attraction for really dumb snorkelers and scuba divers who are more amused by what they can control in coral reefs than the amazing amount of biodiversity.
Regardless, I was a fan of the Polychaetes, no matter how annoyed I got by people playing with them. Fantasizing about a life as a marine biologist, my mind briefly drifted. Considering the number of children who wanted to be marine biologists, it was probably the number one dream profession, knocking Astronaut to number two on the list. Yet no one I knew was a marine biologist (though I did live in the midwest). It was almost unnattainable. But yet here, at this school, in the middle of nowhere, I could become one. If I just stuck it out, and didn't pay attention to my mom complain about how much money I might one day make, I could live my dream.
My eyes drifted down. And there it was. As if it had been waiting for me. It was like something from a bad dream. Never seeing it before, I wondered potentially if I was still sleeping. Surely this was something so grotesque only my unconscious mind could have made it up. And indeed, it looked rather like the hallucigenia creature found to have existed during the Cambrian explosion, walking on the ocean floor with spines extending from its body.
It was a rather horrific animal. I screamed. It was purple and orange and scrunched up and down like a caterpillar. And it was large, about the size of a toothpaste container. Also, despite there being a wall of glass containing it, it appeared to be right in front of my face. And I'd be damned if I had to dream about it the following night.
I shot out of that room as quickly as I could. I would've continued my run across the hallway, if I hadn't perceptively noticed someone watching me, potentially wondering where a loud scream had originated at 8:3o in the morning. I gathered my wits, and resorted to power walking to my first class.
Worst of all, I couldn't even think of what KIND of thing that horrific thing was.
Maybe marine biology wasn't for me after all.
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