Love in the Time of Climate Change (14 page)

“Hi Alice!” my students replied in unison, unprompted.

We went inside their 200-year old postcard-perfect farmhouse. Not one of these drafty and dreary relics from the dark ages but cozy as could be, with attic and walls and foundation now superinsulated. Triple-glazed windows with window quilts to hold in the heat at night. Thermal-siphoning air panels on the south-facing walls, solar hot water, and even more photovoltaics on the south-facing roof.

“Does the house have a name?” a student asked.

“House,” Lonnie said, passing around another bowl of garlic.

“Hi House!” chorused my students.

Priceless.

We went down to the lower gardens, a smorgasbord of everything you can sell in a farmers' market. A cornucopia of fall produce. Terraced slopes of chard and broccoli, sugar snap peas, yummy pods and all, and five types of bizarre, crazy-colored, winter squash. No monocultures, not even mini ones, here; the sweet potatoes were nestled in with
the cauliflower, its brainy white head touching roots with rutabagas, carrots, and enormous, almost scary-looking leeks. Everything was mulched to the max to save water and weeding. Christmas lima beans wound their purple tendrils up a wooden tepee fifteen feet high, fully loaded with enough protein to feed the entire class and more. Edges of grapes and black raspberries, high- and low-bush blueberries, some picked out or gone by, some still bursting with fruit. Five hives with manic worker bees rushing out in a frenzy to sip the last of the fall goodies from goldenrod and aster, and then returning to regurgitate it back into their miraculous combs as liquid gold, nectar of the gods, wildflower honey.

And, of course, the garlic. Bed after bed of wondrous garlic. The air was thick with its potent smell.

I read somewhere that garlic is the third-most-powerful aphrodisiac in the world, next to oysters and honey. Bramble Hill Farm had two of the three covered. Here I was, chewing on a piece of Purple Stripe garlic while bees buzzed through the air and Samantha was bending over one of the beds … oh yeah, the garlic was certainly having an effect on me.

“Come on,” Jacob said. “The best is yet to come. On to the animals!”

And they were the cutest animals. Goats that they milked to make three kinds of cheeses, butting heads and leaping into the air like jumping beans on steroids. Baby bunnies that we all got to hold, which nestled under our shirts and stuck their quivering noses out at us, much to the delight of the entire class, who let out a collective “ooohhh!” over their off-the-charts cuddliness.

It was fall food heaven, a locavore's dream come true.

All had been awe and wonder till we ventured to the chicken coop for the last leg of the tour.

The best laid plans …

“It's not often you see one of these,” bragged Jacob, patting
himself on the back. “Designed and built by yours truly. A passive-solar chicken coop, guaranteed to keep these girls happy. And a happy chicken is a laying chicken. Water drums in the back, thermal mass to hold heat, even their very own PV.”

“Do the chickens have names?” asked one of my students, continuing the theme of the day. As he spoke he leaned back, accidentally unlatching the henhouse door, which swung free and wide open.

“Whoa!” yelled Jacob. “Shut the—”

Too late. Before you could say “Down the Rabbit Hole,” out raced three geese, which, for whatever reason, had made themselves at home in the chicken coop.

“Don't panic!” yelled Jacob, clearly panicking. “They can smell fear!”

The worst thing you can yell in a difficult situation is “Don't panic!” Those two words are about as terror-inducing as they come. When someone yells “Don't Panic,” people panic. It's human nature, for Christ sake, and my students were certainly no exception.

Geese are birds with issues. Big birds. With big issues. Never the most pleasant of creatures, they seem perpetually pissed off, down on themselves, down on each other, and down on the whole damn world. Releasing them into a group of scared-silly college kids was an absolute recipe for disaster. At least for us.

The geese were pumped.

The three burst out of the confines of the chicken coop, hissing and squawking and aggressively flapping their wings.

Chaos ensued. Absolute total chaos.

“Run!” yelled the brownnoser, high-tailing it for the greenhouse. Students scattered, laughing and shrieking.

The three geese, a heckling, taunting, triangulation of trouble, made a beeline toward Samantha and her posse.
There was something about that woman that was irresistible, even to the friggin' geese.

Her dander up, Samantha instinctively stepped in front of her gaggle of girls (the human ones, not the geese), stiffened her back, and protectively held her hand up in a stop sign.

“Halt!” she cried, staring down the geese.

Middle-school matron or not, she failed to impress the geese, which clearly couldn't give a shit.

The lead one, a big, white bully of a bird with an evil eye and a diabolical hiss, reared up and pecked her right between the breasts.

A stunned looked on her face, Samantha took three steps backwards, stumbled over the pitchfork, and toppled head over heels into the farm pond. She disappeared for a moment and then came up sputtering, muck and ooze dripping off of her.

In situations like this, what is a guy to do? Take control? Shout out commands? Calm his unruly herd? Gallantly rush to the rescue of his maiden in distress and slay the beastly dragon, or in this case, goose?

Far from it! The whole time the crisis was brewing, this guy stood stock-still, rooted to place, mouth agape, silent, paralyzed with fear.

Students had barricaded themselves in the greenhouse. One was on top of his car. The brownnoser had climbed a tree.

Meanwhile Jacob, pitchfork in hand, had corralled the three troublemakers and herded them back, squawking and hissing, into the chicken coop, latching the gate securely behind them.

Lonnie, quick to the rescue, had rushed into the pond and helped Samantha out of the water and onto her feet. She sloshed her way out to a warm round of applause and audible gasps of relief from the rest of the class.

I forced myself to look away.

One, I was mortified. Here had been a golden opportunity for me to make quite the hero of myself, to show off my masculinity, or at least to come out looking mildly respectable. Instead I had played the gawking statue, not exactly a tribute to manliness.

Two, she had on a white button-down shirt which, when wet, was really quite revealing. Next to nothing was left to the imagination, and, once more, the connections between her and Goldilocks were made readily apparent. With everyone's garlic high just kicking in, more than one pair of student eyes remained glued to that soaking-wet top.

Finally, with superhuman effort, I forced myself out of my daze and confusion, and attempted to reclaim some sort of control over my class.

“Holy shit!” I cried as I turned to Samantha, physically pushing my chin up with my hand in a vain effort to avert my gaze from her breasts. “Are they, I mean, are you all right?”

Everyone laughed, including the geese, who hissed and honked as if they had planned the whole damn escapade just for our benefit. Which they may very well have.

Fortunately, procrastination occasionally has its advantages. I had neglected the night before to unpack my clean laundry from the trunk of the car and, mumbling apologies, I handed the first items I could find to Samantha. While the class huddled in groups, yukking it up and giggling like middle-schoolers, she took a quick trip into the house to change. Apparently none the worse for wear, she soon returned to the scene of the crime with my PVCC spring softball uniform on, a ragged pair of PVCC sweatpants and a T-shirt with my name and number on the back.

I made a mental note never to wash them again.

Once more, there was a warm round of applause from her fellow students.

It's amazing what an incident like this does for class bonding. You can try every trick in the pedagogical book, every ice-breaker, every getting-to-know-you opener, but—mark my words—nothing,
nothing
, brings students closer together than a terrorist attack by manic geese.

On the ride home, my three carpoolers chatted nonstop. The incident at the farm had made them instant best buddies. Much to the delight of the other two, the know-it-all was reviewing highlights of the afternoon festivities, hilariously imitating voices (even the goose's) with remarkable accuracy. The brownnoser was going on and on about the “best field trip ever” and “double, no triple, wow,” and I was convinced she wasn't bullshitting. She even referred to me as Casey, not Professor. And, all the while, the autism-spectrum kid had miraculously emerged from his awkward shell and was fast and furiously hitting on her.

And doing it quite well. By the time we were pulling into Parking Lot E he had her phone number.

Emotionally exhausted, I finally staggered back to my office. It was late. The science studio was vacant, my colleagues had all headed home, and adjuncts had yet to come in for evening classes.

Things clearly had not gone as planned, yet, as the brownnoser had said, this could very well have been the most effective field trip on record.

Let's face it: ten years from now, how much were students going to remember from my class? Probably not much. But they sure as hell weren't going to forget Bramble Hill Farm. A fact or two about solar power was bound to get lodged in one of those vast labyrinths of neural pathways, along with geese and pitchforks and wet, white button-down shirts. How could it not?

I was just shutting down my computer and getting set to head home when who else but the dean strolled into my
office. Wheezing and huffing, he plopped his heavy frame down in a chair.

“How goes it, Professor?” he asked.

For the most part, the dean and I got along quite well. We weren't exactly buddy-buddy but our relationship was generally cordial and productive. Except, of course, when it wasn't.

He rarely made a visit to my office unless something was up. I anxiously attempted to read his face. Nada.

“Another day in paradise,” I answered, my standard reply to authority.

“Another good day I hope?” he asked, his eyebrows edging up. “Or was it, shall we say, something of a wild goose chase?”

I forced a smile—an ashen, pallid smile, more like a grimace that accompanies gastrointestinal distress or severe constipation. He was on to me, he had me by the short hairs, and he was clearly taking delight in my discomfort.

He paused for dramatic effect, just to watch me obligingly squirm.

Bastard. Out with it!

“I just had an interesting encounter with a student in the cafeteria,” he continued. “I approached her, thinking it was you, but clearly she was not.”

I gulped. I did not like how this was going.

“Red flags always go up when I see attractive students wearing their professor's clothing.”

Damn! Why did I have to go and loan her my softball uniform? What was I thinking?

Freud would have had a field day with that one.

“Whoa, whoa, wait a minute.” I stood up awkwardly. “I can explain.”

“No need to,” he motioned me back to my seat. “She already did.”

I held my breath. There was no telling with the dean. Sometimes he was as kind as Gandhi, other times more
Attila the Hun–like. I waited to see which side he would come down on.

“Something about a solar home tour and geese from hell?”

“Well,” I said, exhaling. “You see, we were just finishing up a lesson on photovoltaics. I thought a visit to the …”

He made another hand signal, a slash across the neck that not so loosely translated as “shut the hell up.”

“She was quite forthcoming with the details,” he went on. “I see no need of additional ones from you.”

There was another long awkward silence, he all the while glaring at me, me desperately attempting to once again avoid all eye contact.

“Just when you think you've heard it all,” he sighed. “Attack geese! Boy, this is one for the books!” He hauled his massive bulk up and off my chair.

As he reached for the doorknob he turned and shot me one more killer glance.

“She made one rather bizarre comment.”

I waited with bated breath.

“She said you're the best teacher she's ever had. The best. Odd, don't you think? One gets mauled by killer geese, nearly drowns in a pond full of chicken shit, and then raves about the one who was responsible for it all?”

He glared at me, eyebrows raised once again.

“Rather, peculiar, no?”

Without waiting for a response he left, shutting the door behind him and leaving me, for the second time that day, frozen in place, speechless.

‘Conservationist' Told Not to Unscrew Bulbs Amherst—Police over the weekend issued a verbal warning to a Gray Street man who they say has been unscrewing porch lights in his neighborhood for the past two months
.