Excitement

Well, yesterday I had a bit of excitement. I was attacked by a skua.

See, my roommate was home from work, and didn't particularly feel like going to the galley for lunch, so I said I would bring her back a burger and some fries. So I went to lunch, ate mine, and collected the appropriate things for her lunch. The burger, fully loaded, and fries were on a plate, nicely wrapped up in plastic.

Here's where things started to go wrong. I stepped outside, and immediately nearly stepped on a skua, who was blending in nicely with the ground. He started eyeing me up, and I knew what his little brain was thinking (they know what food on a plate looks like). I turned my back on him, and immediately heard wings flapping. I leaned over and tried to cover the plate with my arms, but the skua came right up in my face, and stole the top bun of the burger through the plastic. This caused several ketchup packets and all the onions on the burger to fall off as well. I swear I could hear the monster chortling to himself as he inhaled the burger bun.

I took the now sadly depleted burger back to my roommate, who was appreciative of my brush with death, and was not in the least upset by the loss of the burger top. As I went back to the scene of the crime to finish cleaning up (I wasn't about to hang around with the food still in my hands!), I saw the offending bird attempt the same attack on a man with a sandwich. However, the man with the sandwich put the food in his coat, thus fending off the bird attack. This was a tactic I could not use, as I was carrying several items on a plate, plus I wasn't wearing a coat.

So that was my excitement yesterday. The skua got so close to my face that had I moved, I would have head-butted him (which doesn't seem like a bad idea, if it wouldn't get me sent home). They are smart, wicked birds, who have quite possibly read the entire Antarctic Treaty, and know that regardless of what they do to us, we can't do a thing to them, except perhaps call them nasty names.

After that, I had to take the written portion of my driver test. I haven't found out if I passed yet or not, but no one has said anything yet. Today was the 'daily check' portion of the test, which is a practical. Basically, you have to go around and show that you know what to look for on the apparatus (checking fluids, tires, etc). While on a normal day, we would have a checklist to go off of, today we were expected to do it by memory. I passed anyway, but only because my proctor was pretty cool, and gave me a hint on one of the things.

Tomorrow is the driving test. I am betting rather heavily against my passing that.