Wednesday, September 15, 2010

"All I wanna say is that/ they don't really care about us..."

They came one morning, with their yellow safety hard hats and big boots. The decision was strange, "The soil around this area is contaminated, and has to be replaced."

To our much surprise, the big old trees were all cut. We joked, "Maybe the institute is out of budget and they are going to burn wood this winter to keep us warm!!". Big machines started digging around the building. Serious concerns came up, "If it’s this contaminated, how about us? What are we doing here?". In time intervals of morning to noon, between my changing shoes and going to the lab to coming back for lunch, there was a huge hole by my window. Small and big machines were coming and going and the hole got bigger and bigger. "Maybe we are all contaminated and considered a threat to the city, and they want to bury us all within the institute…Should I check to see if the main doors are locked?". In matter of a couple of days, bigger machines started to fill up the hole.

As funny as it sounds, there were huge holes being dug and filled. Sitting here by the window and analyzing my experiments results, I’m thinking that I’m not worried about the contamination, or the energy sources for this winter, or the building to fall apart. I’m worried about the little groundhog family who lives across the field from my office. They used to come out every day together, picnicking on the grass, chewing on the leaves and the yellow small flowers. And believe me, they were not showing the slightest sign of being contaminated, with their big happy cheeks and round bellies…
I hope they are still there, safe and not panicked. Maybe I should check on them when these machines are all gone.

2 comments:

Hiva said...

Please check on them Nava jooon, and if you can take a picture..I love these creatures :)

Reza Mahani said...

Kind of unrelated, but we have some ground squirrels in the backyards. They are cute and fun to watch, but they also make holes all over the backyard. So I have a mixed feeling about them :)
The other day a black cat had caught one of them, the cat played with the unfortunate ground squirrel, releasing and catching it repeatedly. Sima was totally disgusted by the cruelty of the cat, but I was thinking this is the true nature ... fun, cute and cruel, all at the same time