Marmots

Tiffany and Nicole and I are hanging out down in the Bistro again, as we have done every night for the past several days. We're on our laptops, deciding where to go when the rest of them go to Paris (we're thinking Dublin at the moment and it's looking beautifully cheap to go there over Easter weekend)

Today was nicer-not as many classes.

The real whee of today was Professor Bujak, my British Studies professor and just about the funniest history teacher I have ever had the pleasure to meet, was sitting at dinner with Professor Green tonight. They were discussing the Black Plague with us, and suddenly the discussion got weird.

He started discussing marmots (and their usefulness in seige engines such as catapults and trebuchets) and other rodents of that sort and what would fly the best when you were attacking a walled city or castle, and exactly how long you should let the marmot have the plague before you send it over the wall (Bujak was all for waiting till it was juicy so it would make a nice splat and spread disease farther) For the next half-hour he explored the theory that the duckbilled platypus had carried the plague northward disguised as a marmot.

He also thinks that him and Professor Green should make a TV show where they pit either celebrities or American gladiators up against a marmot, and then he decided they should pit capybaras (South American rodent that's about the size of a small dog) against marmots and have the capybaras with little armor plates and nose javelins.

We laughed till we cried; it took me till ten minutes later to stop snickering every time I thought of a marmot. Even now it's bringing a smile to my face...I will never see marmots in the same light again...



UPDATE: Posted a video of the Celtic Anthrax (I think that's our title now) hanging out in the Bistro. My apologies to Erin for the bad shots of her but I have no video editing software.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hXB2p051gj8

Cheers,
Bec