Kiwi birds!

Hello!

So, two bits of news today.

1. Kiwi birds are adorable! IES went to Willowbank last night and saw the kiwi reserve. We also saw a kea huddled against a wall (apparently they are usually very sociable and love to show off a bit, but it was raining pretty heavily, so...) and some enormous eels and a possum. Possums are like the scourge of New Zealand, so New Zealanders encourage hitting the possums with cars. But the kiwi birds have these little legs, they are just like brown fluff balls with little legs and a long skinny beak. Pretty much all those caricatures of kiwi birds are spot on. They make a low little snuffling sound when they are digging around in the dirt. Also, the kiwi egg weighs 30-40% of the kiwi's weight... so that is like me laying a thirty to forty pound egg... We saw an x-ray of it, and it is ridiculous.

2. For those of you following along at home, I had my seminar presentation today, and it went quite well. I was really impressed with how on time people stayed. Nobody ran over, it ran very smoothly, it was like clockwork. In the States, it seems like everyone runs over and you end up shorting the last person (that was me), but no, we even left early. I'm glad to be done! Now I've got to write the research paper itself, but I am not terribly worried, and I've got until April 3rd. If you have any questions about mammoths, let me know (except when are they cloning one... Greg keeps asking me, but I don't know!).

Yay, I'm going to go play pool!