Last Saturday, in the middle of what looked to be a normal Tacoma day (rain and thunder and lightning bolts and really bad drivers), a facilities worker uncovered the bones of a regular-sized egg-stealer in the President’s woods.
The discovery has launched what looks to be a months-long dig, and has not only attracted the attention of the top names in the fields of archeology, but national attention as well. You know, cameras, flashing lights, reputable news sources like the champs over at Fox.
The area has been cordoned off and is now only accessible to those with archaeological dig experience, i.e. Security officers, tour guides, Nosferatu heir/President of the University Tonald Rhombus, Sasquatch and writers at The Flail (well ok maybe not that last one but I scalped a ticket off of Sasquatch so I’m in).
“I dunno,” Campy Camp, five time award winning tour guide, said, “I don’t think that’s a dinosaur. It kind of looks like my dog? Skip went missing a while ago. Either that or I forgot to feed her.”
Camp’s eyes glazed over, so I bopped her on the nose and she seemed to reset.
A cheerful, personable grin appeared almost immediately, and she started to walk backwards in the general direction of the library, saying as she went, “And you’ll notice over here our lovely clock tower, always playin’ the modern hits that kids love…”
Back at the scene, General Hairpin, a part-time Security officer who also moonlights as a spoken word poet, was heard to have said, “I don’t get it! We had egg-stealer campus access privileges revoked at the end of the Cretaceous period! And we have strict policies forbidding the burial of dinosaurs on campus! Friends, pets, or otherwise!”
A panicked freshman (probably from South Quad) ran up to General Hairpin and grabbed at him sleeve, screaming, “WHAT’S A CRETACEOUS PERIOD? IS IT CONTAGIOUS?”
General Hairpin, puffing up his chest in the self-important manner of politicians and also cobra king-snakes, answered, “Well the earth got some nasty crampage (see that’s why it’s called the Cretaceous period) and a bunch of things died because of it.
I don’t think she’ll be having another one of those for a while. She’s been cramp-free since we got her on hormones in the Middle Ages.”
I brought the topic back to the matter at hand, remarking, “I didn’t even know that this campus existed in the Cretaceous period.” I mean, apparently there were Methodists here once but even that creation myth sounds super sketch.
“Oh, it did,” General Hairpin said knowingly. “That was before we had the swipe card system installed.” Before the card swipe system? What?! That would have to mean…students had to use keys to get in to their dorms!
I was stunned, to say the least. “Wait…if that was before Student ID cards, how the heck did students pay for food?! HOW DID THEY EAT?!!!”
General Hairpin took a bite from a large carrot he had somehow fished from the bottom of his trousers.
“Some didn’t. It’s true: students starved. Especially the kids with dietary restrictions. They had no chance of competing with the egg-stealers, the buttheads. Did you know that egg-stealers are gluten-free? Yeah me neither. Apparently it has something to do with their intestines.”
Just then, Campy Camp turned the corner and, having caught the tail end of the conversation (not the egg-stealing end, just the regular end) asked, “What’s a gluten-free?”
Wait, I know this. I got this. “It’s just another name for something that’s bad for you.
In the 90s, it was calories, and now it’s gluten-free. Calories, gluten-free, trans fats, fizzy yellow beers-they’re all the same.”
Gen. Hairpin snorted. “Pshh. That’s a lie. Me, personally? I don’t believe in gluten-free. Or vitamins. Like, do those things even exist? Have you ever seen one? No way. Not once, not never.”
I made my goodbyes to the two because I’m trying to report on the freaking egg-stealers, which are totally real, unlike vitamins and gluten-free and fairies.
The next person to talk to was Head Rock, acquisitions supervisor at the Slayer Museum.
He too had no idea what the egg stealer bones were doing in the President’s woods. “Contrary to popular belief, we don’t actually kill dinosaurs at the Slayer Museum. We only accept the bones of the dinosaurs who have died of natural causes.”
I snorted. “That’s stupid. Your need fuels the dinosaur-killing market.”
Head Rock sighed sadly. “Dinosaurs don’t actually exist anymore.”
“They totally do! They’re all over the internet! One of them even has a comic strip series!”
“Nah, that’s just something that the government made up to make sure that people would continue throwing money at the organizations that are ‘dedicated’ to getting animals off the Endangered Species List.” Head Rock didn’t have much else to say, which is just as well because his argument sucked.
For instance, dinosaurs aren’t on the Endangered Species List! Nor are the egg-stealers, nor the velociraptors, nor the leopluridons.
Then again, that’s probably because they’re “extinct,” which is another way of saying that they don’t exist. Like vitamins!
