Taking the cowardly option on Care of Magical Creatures

Prof. Adrian Meade

February 09, 2013 5:09 PM

Find the difference! [Int. class] by Prof. Adrian Meade

Adrian decided to go in a different direction for this lesson. He was tired, and the students probably were too, of lecturing them every single class. Today, he had told them that in order to enjoy this lesson they needed read ahead. This class was all about having fun and interacting with the creatures they were going to study outside of the classroom. The Sub professor had recently learned that there was a small clearing on the grounds where a former teacher taught. The COMC professor realized it was a good alternative to have the students out of the classroom to learn under the sun and to feel the air. It was better alternative than having them all cupped up inside four walls.

The professor was enjoying this brilliant idea as he moved around the rather large kennel that housed the knarls and hedgehogs. The animals were surrounded by vegetation of their natural habitats. In fact, the kennel was so large that it would be kind of hard for the students to find the animals. If he was honest with himself, this was one of the best classes he had come up with. The knarls and hedgehogs were safely cupped up in their homes just chilling. It had been kind of hard for him to acquire the both kind of animals for this lesson, but they would be returned to where they came from. Animals should be free in their homes.

The magizoologist had pasted a note on the classroom door since he had forgotten to let the students know that their class would be outside. It had been too late to send owl, but he had asked the head of houses to put the note on the notice board. Better be safe than sorry. Like always, he was early as he needed to inspect everything. He just hoped the students had read.

“Welcome,” he greeted the first students to arrive. He was smiling and handed them a small piece of paper. “Stay here,” he ordered. He had handed them a pop quiz to make sure they had read. He didn’t want anyone to have a free ride on his class.

Once everyone was here and had the paper he spoke up, “what I just gave you is a pop quiz. You have ten minutes to answer it before we can continue with the class.” They could sit down on the floor to answer it. It wasn’t very long. The quiz consisted of just 5 small true or false questions about knarls.

Once the ten minutes passed he extended his hand to receive them. “Now, your assignment for the day is to get in the kennel and hunt for the knarls. Since you read beforehand you know how to distinguish them from the hedgehogs,” he smiled at everyone. “Everything you may need to lure them out and distinguish them is on the tables outside of it.” Adrian had put different kind of foods that the animals might be tempted with.

“Of course, I will require the customary essay from what your learned today and from what you read. If you need me I will be right here!” Adrian finished and made a hand gesture to the students. They could go in through the small door that he had just opened. “You have the rest of the class to get acquainted with the knarls and hedgehogs that are in there.

OOC: posting rules apply! You can check information on the knarls here

Subthreads:

I sure feel different by Waverly Canterbury - Pecari with Sullivan Quincy, Pecari

I did the reading - true or false by Michael Grosvenor with Thad Pierce, Aladren

Taking the cowardly option by Henny B-F-R, Aladren

0 Prof. Adrian Meade Find the difference! [Int. class] 0 Prof. Adrian Meade 1 5

Waverly Canterbury - Pecari

February 09, 2013 7:40 PM

I sure feel different by Waverly Canterbury - Pecari

Waverly had once really liked COMC, but it was starting to become a drag. She liked working with the magical creatures way more than simply learning about them, so she had gotten tired of the lectures really quickly. It was getting harder to stay away during the lectures too, so she really hoped they would get to do something fun soon.

Her wish came true when she saw the note on the door saying class was outside. Where outside, she didn't know, but there were directions on the note, thankfully. She followed as best she could and, after a bit of searching, found it. Happy with her success, she took the piece of paper handed to her and sat down near where she had been standing. She looked the paper over and groaned. Ugh, pop quiz. She hated these, but at least she had gotten some reading done. With Baking Club currently on hiatus because of the challenges and Quidditch canceled, she found she had a lot of time on her hands to dedicate to schoolwork and letter writing.

The rest of the class came in and Waverly started on the pop quiz dutifully. She got one wrong, she knew she did, but she really had no idea what it was. After the professor had collected it, she searched through her textbook for the right answer and mentally kicked herself for not knowing the obvious.

At least the outside held promise of playing with the knarls, and she was right. It was only unfortunate that she had chosen today to try and look pretty. She was wearing a white skirt with a dominating green floral pattern accented with a thin black belt, a white collared button-up, a short-sleeved orange cardigan, and her tried-and-true black flats. Her curled brown hair was tied in a loose side ponytail and she was wearing the pearl earrings her mother had gotten her. She was even wearing makeup to go with it. It wasn't exactly a dirt-friendly outfit, but she would have to make sacrifices if class called for it. Now that she was getting older and feeling older at fourteen, she wanted to dress in a way that made her look her age too even if it didn't always match with everyone else's taste.

Once Professor Meade let them go to hunt for the creatures, she went into the large kennel and peered around. It was kind of strange seeing so many of the same but different creature. They were all so cute! She knew her little sister would love to be in this class right now.

It wasn't too hard to tell the difference between hedgehogs and knarls according to her textbook. If the animal happily accepted the food, it was a hedgehog. If not, it was a knarl. She picked up a large stick of celery and broke it in half just in case the first animal she encountered was a hedgehog.

She went up to one and accidentally bumped into someone as she closed in on the hedgehog/knarl. "Oof," she said, stumbling a little from the impact. "Oh, I'm so sorry. I wasn't looking where I was going." She smiled sheepishly and then offered half of the celery. "Celery stick?"

0 Waverly Canterbury - Pecari I sure feel different 0 Waverly Canterbury - Pecari 0 5

Sullivan Quincy, Pecari

March 05, 2013 3:06 PM

I've always been different by Sullivan Quincy, Pecari

Of all his classes, Sully thought CoMC might be one he could continue after the CATS revealed he was utter rubbish at everything else. He wasn't sure he wanted to study magic creatures as his life work, especially not the scarier ones that were likely to come up during advanced lessons, but he didn't think his CATS results would automatically disqualify him from continuing the subject next year like they would in, say, Potions or Transfiguration.

He was already rallying his excuses for when Mom asked why he got Poors in those.

He was running a little late when he headed out of the Pecari common room, but he took the time to check the password, as he always did before he left in the paranoid belief that Professor Levy was actively trying to lock him out in the Gardens at night by unexpectedly changing the password on him. The password hadn't changed, but he did notice the sign regarding CoMC's change in venue.

As the new location was much closer to the Pecari rooms than the classroom was, he did make it to the designated clearing on time. He was less pleased about the pop quiz, but there were far worse things than a handful of True/False questions. Three of them he knew for sure and the last two he just took his best guess on. It was the most confident he felt coming out of a test all week.

He turned in his quiz and only moaned a little at the expected instruction to write an essay about the day's lesson, then headed into the kennel to check out the real live knarls and hedgehogs. He though a hedgehog would be an awesome pet someday, but he thought it best to forgo the knarl. He'd probably leave food out by mistake sometimes and when he got home the whole place would be in shambles. So no knarl for him.

He was peering into a cage, trying to determine if he could spot any evidence of a recent berserk state without inducing one when somebody walked into him and he had to grab the table the cage sat on before he ended up sitting on the ground.

He was about to make a snappish retort when he saw the perpetrator was Waverly and he forgot to say whatever it was he had been about to say because he was noticing that she looked pretty today instead. "Um, hi, er, no harm done," he assured her. "Thanks," he added, accepting the celery stick even as he doubted he actually wanted one. He hated celery. Well, it was probably for the critters anyway and he hadn't been having much luck with his previous method of telling the difference. He just hoped they liked celery better than he did.

Tentatively, he put the vegetable down in front of the creature, praying just loud enough that Waverly could probably hear him, "Be a hedgehog, be a hedgehog, don't go berserk."

0 Sullivan Quincy, Pecari I've always been different 0 Sullivan Quincy, Pecari 0 5

Michael Grosvenor

March 07, 2013 2:05 PM

I did the reading - true or false by Michael Grosvenor

Michael had done the reading. Truly, he had. Skimmed it. He'd always assumed that that was all that was really required in advance, as lessons usually involved having an animal introduced to them and then writing it up for homework, which was when you needed to actually read it properly and copy stuff. Pop quizzes were a sneaky move. The skim he'd done had taught him that knarls looked like hedgehogs but were a bit mental. Any questions that relied recall of that information, he got right. The rest he guessed. Hoping he hadn't done badly enough to win a lecture on taking the CATS seriously, he turned his paper in and went to do the practical.

The professor had only dropped hints as to what they were meant to do and how they could tell the difference. Michael was sure it was to test who had done the reading but, as Professor Meade had already tested that with the pop quiz, he would already know how hard Michael had studied. Unless he had been a really lucky guesser. There didn't seem much to lose by checking his textbook now. There was potentially a lot to be lost by not checking, mostly in the finger department. He flicked his book open and skimmed until he'd made sense of the professor's instructions, fairly sure he'd got question four wrong. Casually, he chucked a bit of food towards a group of what looked like hedgehogs. One of them trotted forward and began to munch cheerily. Nothing started having a full on freak out.

“Hey,” he called a little sarcastically, “Grubs up...” Although the first hedgehog had actually finished most of what he had proffered. Did that explain why none of the rest seemed bothered?

“So, how do we tell whether they're hedgehogs which are full, or knarls that aren't very observant?” he asked the person nearest him.

13 Michael Grosvenor I did the reading - true or false 199 Michael Grosvenor 0 5

Henny B-F-R, Aladren

March 07, 2013 6:07 PM

Taking the cowardly option by Henny B-F-R, Aladren

Henny was not very thrilled about any creature whose behavioural traits included 'going berserk.' But, knowing what she was facing in advance, she had had time to accept it. Although the books did not go into vast detail on what these fits of temper entailed, she tried to realistically assess the level of damage something hedgehog sized could do. It was true that magical creatures could sometimes have power that was not proportional to their size, or could do incredibly violent things like spit fire but she felt sure the book would have mentioned any such high level threats. The target of its wrath seemed to be plants, in general, and it only had a XXX rating. That was at least two too many in her eyes, but it was probably not capable of harming her very much.

She was less prepared for the change in scenery, back to the gardens. She associated those with the lessons she had hated the most, although she had to remind herself that it was not because of anything that had happened in them. It was because of the place she had been at in her life. Still, she would have rather not gone back.

She sailed through the pop quiz, confident of her answers. This confidence faded when they were set to the practical part of the class. She hovered by the door of the knarl enclosure. It was a fairly large space. Not really what one could call being confined with them... She held her quill and parchment ready, quite to content to observe for a while. After all, the task was to differentiate the two animals. All she really needed to do was watch...

13 Henny B-F-R, Aladren Taking the cowardly option 211 Henny B-F-R, Aladren 0 5

Thad Pierce, Aladren

March 08, 2013 5:07 PM

True by Thad Pierce, Aladren

Naturally, Thaddeus had done the reading. Moreso than in other classes, he depended on theory and written work to carry his grade in CoMC. It wasn't so much that he was bad with the animals or disliked them, but there was a level of unpredictabily in wild creatures that did not exist in brewing or casting. There was always the possibility that, no matter how well you knew the facts about a critter, it might just take a notion to dislike you or be irascably uncooperative for no reason at all, and there was nothing you or your grade could do to help it.

So he did the reading, and even skimmed through a few other references in case they had good advice for how to handle ornery specimens of the species. As such, he breezed through the pop quiz and wondered what was taking everyone else so long to get though the five questions. He turned in his quiz then headed toward the enclosure.

Knarls were ornery and irascible by nature, so there was little doubt they would demonstrate these traits today. He collected a few pieces of food and wandered between the different critter groups while he worked up the courage to provoke their anger. Stopping to watch as Grosvenor made his bid, he saw only one approach the offering and chow down. That one was obviously a hedgehog.

Thad was ready to assume the others in this particular enclosure were as well since they hadn't flown into violent rages, but Grosvenor raised the possibility that maybe they just hadn't noticed. Feeling that the chances were good that these were all hedgehogs, Thad tossed bits of his food toward the non-responsive ones and called out as he did so to make sure they were paying attention this time. One lazily wandered toward the piece that landed next to him and began munching. The others seemed unbothered by the food in their midst.

"Easiest way," Thad answered, "is to apply more food for a more conclusive answer. These all seem to be well-fed hedgehogs."

"Lacking additional such supplies, however, your two options are to assume they are hedgehogs because they didn't react and their sense of smell is pretty good, or to assume they are knarls because mistaking a hedgehog for a knarl is less dangerous than mistaking a knarl for a hedgehog. It depends on how paranoid you want to be. Just be sure to annotate your conclusions thoroughly so you don't lose points just because the animals are being difficult."

0 Thad Pierce, Aladren True 0 Thad Pierce, Aladren 0 5