Professor Fawcett
September 13, 2008 9:41 PM
Lesson Two for Second Years by Professor Fawcett
The student chairs, usually in neat rows, had been put in a tight semicircle around a smaller table than usual. Most of the table's surface was taken up by a rectangular fish tank holding the creature of the day, whose unfortunate size had lead to the rearrangement of the clearing. In rows, none of the students at the back could have hoped to see the animal John would be lecturing about clearly, and most kids didn't seem to learn well by just hearing and reading. John had no idea why that was - he was sure he'd never been that way as a boy - but it appeared to be true.When the bell rang, he asked for their attention as always and began to call the roll. He had most of their names and faces down now, but structure was good for any group and a younger group more than any other. When the attendance was marked and the roster put away, John took up his chalk and wrote the word 'Plimpy' across the top of his blackboard a little more neatly than usual.
"Plimpies," he said, using his pointer to indicate a round, one-finned fish using a pair of long legs to walk around the sandy bottom of the tank. "Bipedal fish. In nature, they're found on the bottom of deep lakes and are usually searching for water snails, though they'll eat other things if forced to. They're not particularly dangerous to humans, but might nibble on you or your clothes given the opportunity."
He moved his pointer to indicate the fin perched on top of the belegged sphere. "As you all can see, the plimpy has a single dorsal fin, which forces it to rely on its legs for steering and movement. Does anyone know why this can cause problems for plimpies who share territory with merpeople?"
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Professor Fawcett
Lesson Two for Second Years
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Professor Fawcett
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Holly Greer
September 16, 2008 9:47 AM
Holly Rating: Surprisingly Fascinating by Holly Greer
Care of Magical Creatures was always like plying roulette for Holly. One was never quite sure going in if the creature d'jour was going to be beautiful and fascinating, or smelly and disgusting. Sometimes, it was both.As she always did, Holly stopped at the edge of the clearing to assess the situation before moving toward a chair. The area was set up differently than normal and the central table held a large aquarium (relative to, say, a goldfish bowl anyway). She made a small sigh of disappointment and moved to take one of the chairs in the semicircle. The greatest risk today was going to be from her close packed neighbors.
After all, fish were, in Holly's esteemed opinion, bo-ring.
Well, she internally revised, Nemo wasn't bad, thanks to the movie. If they were colorful and tropical, she could probably raise some spark of interest.
She leaned forward to get a closer look to pass judgement on whether magical fish were worth her time and drew back quickly, with a gasp and shocked look, as she caught sight of one of them.
They had legs. Fish weren't supposed to have legs. Was it even still called a fish if it had legs?
A scratch of chalk drew her attention toward where Professor Fawcett was writing "Plimpy" on the board. She didn't like the name. It sounded vaguely condescending and it rhymed too closely to blimpy. Sure the little guy was kind of roundish and was certainly fat by fish standards, but he had legs. He was as close to cute as a fish could get.
She wanted one.
She made herself pay attention as Professor Fawcett started talking and describing the footed fellow. He called it a fish, too, so apparently feet didn't disqualify it. She gave the fish a narrowed look of consideration, trying to decide if she could handle feeding it snails every day, and reached the conclusion that if she could find a decent pair of rubber or latex gloves, she probably could.
She heard the professor's question despite these thoughts and she her mind went immediately to the Little Mermaid. She raised her hand. Once she was called on she answered with the certainty that all merfolk behaved exactly as Ariel did. "The mermaids probably pick them up and then just drop them when they lose interest." She could totally see Ariel lifting one up to sing a verse, and then dropping it to rush off to join Flounder and Sebastian for the chorus - or if she spotted the shine of a dinglehopper. After all, most of her singing mates could just swim off one she let go of them, so she probably wouldn't even consider that Little Phil couldn't.
"And they'll just fall because they can't really swim or direct where or how they hit bottom." The teacher's question answered, Holly wasted no time getting to the heart of her own interests. "How many different colors do they come in?"
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Holly Greer
Holly Rating: Surprisingly Fascinating
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Professor Fawcett
September 19, 2008 1:28 PM
Fascinating is good. by Professor Fawcett
To John's mild surprise, the first hand in the air belonged to Holly Greer. She had shown evidence of having at least a minimum of interest in animals by signing up to assist with the fair booth, but she reminded him too much of his middle niece, Ashley, for demonstrations of said interest to cease to startle him. Not fair, but so it went. He thought he had a better mind than most, but it was still apt to draw a lot of relatively uninformed conclusions.He called on her, and had a split second after she gave her answer where he wondered if she was making a joke. After an instant’s thought, however, he decided even he could not be that far out of the loop with what most people found funny and decided, not entirely happily, that she was being serious. Where on earth had she come up with all that?
“Plimpy coloration tends to reflect that of the environment from which the animal comes,” he said. “So variations occur from lake to lake. This is a defensive device, to lower the chance of being found by predators.” Most of that came from a book he’d read fairly quickly, and he was positive it had contained a bit more information on the topic, but that was a secondary concern. “Ah…You’re close to the answer I meant you to give, but not quite there. Anyone else care to try?”
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Professor Fawcett
Fascinating is good.
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Professor Fawcett
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