Still an MA WMAM.

Well, Preferred University turned me down. I would be lying if I said I wasn't totally devastated for most of the weekend, but I'm feeling better today. I still have three schools left, and if I don't get in, I'll try again in Fall 2009. I wouldn't be the first person who had to go another round a year later, after all. So, after a weekend of tears and wine, I'm feeling pretty philosophical about it all.

What with the rejection and the moving uptown, I am pretty drained, both physically and emotionally. I could do with a nice long nap. I must say, though, that the move went well, and I'm loving the new apartment. I'm this close (holds fingers very close together) to the Cloisters.

Here's a pick-me-up Weird Medieval Animal Monday.

THE CRANE.



Cranes travel in groups, with the leader at the front of the flock, with the rest organized hierarchically behind him. At night, they sleep with a sentinel crane, who keeps himself awake to watch the group. Bartholomaeus Anglicus tells us, in Book 12 of his De proprietatibus rerum that:



The crane is a bird of great wings and strong flight, and flieth high into the air to see the countries towards the which he will draw. And is a bird that loveth birds of his own kind, and they living in company together have a king among them and fly in order. And the leader of the company compelleth the company to fly aright, crying as it were blaming with his voice. And if it hap that he wax hoarse, then another crane cometh after him, and taketh the same office. And after they fall to the earth crying, for to rest, and when they sit on the ground, to keep and save them, they ordain watches that they may rest the more surely, and the wakers stand upon one foot, and each of them holdeth a little stone in the other foot, high from the earth, that they may be waked by falling of the stone, if it hap that they sleep.

Cranes are also the natural enemy of the Pygmies (let's throw in a little Weird Medieval Tribe, shall we?), with whom they are engaged in perpetual warfare. Pliny the Elder tells us:

This tribe [the Pygmaioi] Homer has also recorded as being beset by cranes. It is reported that in springtime their entire band, mounted on the backs of rams and she-goats and armed with arrows, goes in a body down to the sea and eats the cranes’ eggs and chickens, and that this outing occupies three months; and that otherwise they could not protect themselves against the flocks of cranes would grow up; and that their houses are made of mud and feathers and egg-shells.

Here's a pygmy taking on a whole flock of cranes, 300-style:



That's all for now! I'm off to prepare my sacrifices to the gods of higher education.