 Open! Bathes in Maple Syrup | Dancing Lobster | Moy Pomidor | Seneca's Beard | That Is So Fetch!
The barns were already awake by the time he arrived. A pair of mooncalves shuffled sleepily in their enclosure, puffskeins bounced along the ground ahead, and somewhere in the far paddocks a re'em was grazing.
The professor carried a bucket of feed beneath one arm as he made his way down the centre aisle, pausing occasionally to check water troughs and offer a scratch beneath a curious creature's chin. Creature Care wasn't always the thrilling adventure students expected it to be. Most days were spent cleaning, feeding, and observing the habits of the creatures under his care. Truthfully, those were his favourite days.
A sudden crash echoed from the feed shed, which was followed by suspicious silence.
"Please don't be the thunderbird," he sighed, stopping in his tracks as another crash sounded. "Definitely the thunderbird."
Sure enough, when he arrived at the scene, he found the juvenile creature standing proudly atop several overturned sacks of feed. The bird had been experiencing a particularly erumpent phase of growth recently and seemed to believe its increasing size entitled it to increasingly poor decisions.
The thunderbird gave an innocent chirp as one of the sacks slid off the pile and burst open.
Santiago stared.
The thunderbird stared back before lowering its head and nudging the torn sack toward him.
"Thank you," Santiago said dryly as the thunderbird chirped again. "You're still helping clean this up, though."
The bird immediately looked away, causing the man to laugh despite himself.
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