When I'm not up to my armpits in homework to be graded, I spend my lunch break walking around the Back Bay Fens, one of Frederick Law Olmsted's contributions to Boston's park system, a beautiful oasis snaking around the hustle and bustle of Kenmore Square, the various museums, and the Longwood Medical Area. One of the ponds in the fens has a very large submerged tree branch, which I've noticed always attracts some form of wildlife, depending on the weather. Sunny days meant turtles, usually about five or six of them. On cloudy days, there were ducks. Sometimes the day was neither fair nor foul, and I'd find a mixture of turtles and ducks somehow finding the courage to coexist peacefully in close quarters. The Middle East should take lessons - these guys aren't even the same species, and yet I don't see turtles strapping bombs to their shells or ducks dive-bombing indiscriminately. But generally just by looking at the sky I could predict whether ducks or turtles would prevail, or whether I'd see an indeterminate combination. This went on for months. Sunny - turtles. Rainy - ducks. In between - in between. I figured this was more or less a permanent feature of the fens, and I always looked forward to seeing the weather confirmed by the denizens of the tree branch.

Enter the inevitable spoiler, in the form of a cormorant. I don't know where he came from, but now he sits up there, rain or shine, and fouls up the delicate balance of turtles and ducks. There's probably some more political allegory buried in here, isn't there? But I won't go there today. Stupid cormorant.