Kookaburra

When I was an undergrad research assistant in Wegner’s lab, I used to measure out survey data for Betsy using a clear plastic ruler adorned with stickers of strange foreign animals. It was always the same ruler, and I would steady it atop a heavy stack of file folders, next to a #2 pencil, and lug the resulting mass into one of the lab rooms to work in silence.

Over the many hours I spent doing this, I grew fond of that ruler. The pictures were of wild Australian animals, none of which I can remember, save one: the kookaburra.

Dave Sedaris just wrote a lovely, lovely story about the kookaburra (rebellion, actually) for the New Yorker. (Suffice to say anything Sedaris writes nowadays is worthwhile reading.) It immediately brought me back to Cambridge and the lab and those late, late nights with that ruler.

Sure makes me want to pay Betsy a visit.