Introduction to Earth Zoology, Wednesday, period 1

[livingartifact]

"Welcome back," Jenkins greeted at the top of class. "I apologize for last week. Suffice to say, when invited to go investigate a haunted toy factory, offering to burn it down from the outside and save everyone the trouble is a perfectly cromulent response."

Anyway.

"But, terrifying as they might be, toys are not considered part of the Animal Kingdom, so I shall speak no more on that topic. Instead, let us turn our attention to one of Earth's larger land-going mammals, a fantastically armored and horned creature known as the rhinoceros." A few presses of buttons on his remote had the classroom lights dimming and the slide projector clicking on, displaying an image of a single beast with two horns. "As might be expected of a creature whose name literally translates to 'nose horns', the rhinoceros is best recognized by the bony protrusions on the end of its snout. These are generally both the rhino's best weapon and worst weakness, as while one would generally not wish to experience a two-ton, ten-feet-at-the-shoulder beast bearing down on you with a two foot horn jutting from its leading end, humans have gotten extremely good at killing the creatures, which have no other natural predators, in order to harvest the horns for their purported magical properties. As a result, one species of rhinoceros, the African black rhino, has become functionally extinct in the wild, while many others remain in great danger of extinction themselves.

"Those with an interest in evolution — that is the slow process by which organic creatures tend to change to better fit the environments in which they find themselves — may find the rhinoceros particular interesting, in that human scientists have discovered a number of the rhino's evolutionary ancestors, as seen in this chart. Note the Baluchithere, whom I believe would seem almost absurdly large to even the tallest among us in this class. Unfortunately for our dear Prince, these creatures have been gone from most Earths for 23 million years, so we are unlikely to get to meet one of them. We shall, however, meet a pair of white rhinos today, named Thelma and Louise. I've arranged to have, ah." The Library's back door, since Jenkins had gotten into quite an argument with Portalocity over the cost of a quick trip to Massachusetts, "Portal set up through the classroom door there. Do mind the first step. It can be a bit of a doozy."

Library, Wednesday

[era_two_triangle]

There was another one of those Earth holidays coming up, and Peridot fully intended to be on top of this one. It was the one with the pumpkins... she liked pumpkins! And costumes. She liked those too, if only because the novelty of appearance modifiers hadn't worn off just yet; she was still wearing her princess tiara from Homecoming, after all. But beyond that, she really had no idea what the holiday was about. they had to be about things, right?

So her shift today was going to be spent poking through a large pile of books about the history of Halloween and any other holidays or lore that happened to be tied into it by this point.

If that meant that by the end of the day she was just raptly reading horror novels, well, it really was the natural progression of these things, wasn't it?

[OOC: Open!]

Taking Time For You, Wednesday, Second Period

[stickitupmyjinx]

"It's time to begin working on perfecting our vegging routine," Vanessa declared. "We're going to start with Netflix. Now, there are other streaming services out there: Hulu, Amazon, whatever. But Netflix is the only one that's become a generic. You know, like Bandaids." Some of you had no idea what she was talking about, she was sure. "So it's the classic, and we're sticking with it. Go ahead and find something to watch. Maybe you want something engaging and exciting, like meta for Daredevil. Maybe you want something mindless where you can judge everyone's choices, like House Hunters. It's up to you. Just something you can get sucked into and realize it's suddenly three AM and you've watched an entire season. Not that that's going to happen here. Just the first episode, please. You can go back to your room for the rest of them."