Today was marvelous, even before the incident of the badger. I stood
(earnestly and eagerly) by the white board as Community High students
brainstormed zines into near-existence. I basked in the megawatt
smiles of mentors and mentees at Scarlett Middle School. Mrs. Davison
even gave us a huge shout-out at Slauson Middle School’s exhibition of
writing projects on immigration. This was good.
But, friends, confidants, and passersby — today I solved a mystery.
As a lowly Director of Homonym Research, I aspire to the
superInternship of my predecessors like DK. She left before I
arrived, and there were tears. She visited after I arrived, and there
were still more tears.
Through her observation of “walking birds” and “WILDcat” fauna, she
set into motion a vortex of confusion I had the good fortune to see to
completion. The animal in our backyard, just behind the fence to the
left (facing out), is not feline, avian, or whatever groundhogs might
be. We have, rather, a badger.
There are only four things to say on such an occasion:
- Thing 1 — Shocking! (Yes, but fenced.)
- Thing 2 — Badgers keep no one from attending awesome workshops.
- Thing 3 — I can prove Thing 2, because Scott McCloud’s Storytelling &
Comics workshop, concurrent with badger discovery, was awesome. - Thing 4 — I know very little about badgers. It really might be a
groundhog. I think they might be rodentia-mates.
The point, because I think I have one, is this: the identity of
burrowing and loping animals is in the eye of the beholder.
Regardless of what the beholder writes on the internet, however, our
backyard animals are infinitely less important than the students we
work with here at 826 and in area schools. Thanks for having us.