Something You Don't See Everyday

[StopTheGrays]

At work today I had a chance to see something I never had before...at least not there. I walked to the main lobby of the company I work for to meet a vendor. As I entered the area I noticed four or five office workers were there as well and they were all looking up. I looked up as well and I could not believe my eyes. On the other side of the glass that separates the two story ceiling of the main lobby from the elements was what I assumed to be a red tailed hawk and the rabbit it was having for its breakfast.

I did not have time to see how long the bird stayed there with its meal because of the meeting I had to go to with the vendor. When the meeting was done and we went back to the lobby. All that was left to show the hawk and rabbit was there was the bloody smears on the glass. I did try to have another employee get a picture of the hawk but he could not free up a camera in time.


Anybody else seen something at work you would not expect to see during the workday?

[mtnbkr]

That was way cool.

I saw a tornado nearly form in Tyson's Corner from my office (ya listenin' mikey?).

There was a small snake in the *indoor* landscaping of my office at another company.

Other than that, my work life is boring.

Chris

[Typhoon]

A Peregrine falcon nested outside the window of an office building in Anchorage where I temporarily worked.  I was only there to do the actual installation of the office (IT, telecom, etc.) so I did not see the hatching.  But, from what I understand, the new family did just fine.  Very cool...

[K Frame]

"I saw a tornado nearly form in Tyson's Corner from my office (ya listenin' mikey?)."

Wow. A tornado nearly forming.

That's like... nearly getting lucky on your first date.

Or nearly getting the job.

[mtnbkr]

It was over in the direction of your building.  Still, you're right, it's not quite as cool as seeing a fellow beltway bandit get torn to shreds by mother nature.

Seriously though, the funnel formed, it just couldn't stay together long enough for it to touch down.  

Chris

[Preacherman]

Something you don't see everyday?  Well, this reminds me of an incident that happened a couple of years ago at the prison where I work.  I posted about it in another forum at the time, so with a quick copy-and-paste, voila!

We have an experimental unit on our compound, with close to 100 inmates who are permanently on psychotropic medication of one sort or another (sometimes several sorts at once). This is a pilot program to see whether such inmates, instead of being housed in (very costly - per inmate) medical prisons, can be stabilized on a drug "cocktail" and then kept in general population at a high-security institution like ours. It's tended to work well (even the most violent and anti-social of our hard cases tend to steer clear of "the crazies", because their reactions are somewhat unpredictable when threatened ), but now and again, one or two of them decide that they're really fine, thank you, and they don't need to take their medication anymore. We try to enforce their medication by observing them swallowing it, but their ingenuity at disguising their actions means that now and again, they can fool the medical staff.

We have one such inmate who's getting progressively worse. A couple of weeks ago, he was on suicide watch down in Special Housing Unit after trying to slash his wrists with a razor blade. Fortunately (or unfortunately, depending on one's point of view) he didn't remove the razor blade from the plastic razor head first, so he managed to inflict only superficial injuries on himself. After a few days being kept naked, with only a paper disposable sheet, in VERY cool air-conditioning, he was markedly better behaved, and was released back to the compound after a booster shot of his medications.

Well, Charlie decided a day or two ago that since he was feeling so much better, he could stop taking his meds again. Things really hit the fan this morning, when he was walking out of his unit, humming and "jiving" to himself, with his eyes strangely unfocused. A passing CO recognized the signs, and called a psychologist to check on him. Unfortunately, the psychologist who responded was our most attractive female headshrinker, and Charlie decided that the fact that she was confronting him on the compound, in full view of other inmates, meant that she was REALLY turned on by him. He proceeded to try to hug her. She backpedalled frantically and hit her body alarm.

Next thing you know, Charlie has stripped off his clothes (all of them) and is running frantically around the yard, pursued by half-a-dozen compound officers, and screaming vague imprecations about how he's a "sex god" and "all the women want me". (The latter is open to debate...) Charlie happens to be a very well-built man indeed (obviously did a lot of weight work before being incarcerated), and is very fit, so he was able to keep ahead of the panting, puffing pursuers and do several circuits of the yard, to the applause and ribald comments of other inmates, who piled out of their housing units to enjoy the show. As Charlie is also exceptionally well hung, a number of female staff also lined the windows of the corridor overlooking the compound. Their comments about Charlie's equipment are unfortunately not of the variety that I can reproduce in a high-toned, respectable forum like this, but they were clinically eye-opening and anatomically specific, to say the least...

Eventually, Charlie decides that he really has to be close to his psychologist lady-love, and cuts across the compound towards her. This proves to be his undoing, as the posse "cuts the corner" on him and piles on, six deep. After a few minutes of thrashing, heaving bodies, along with excited and pleased cries from Charlie (who may have thought that this was the fulfilment of his wildest desires), he's escorted off to solitary confinement, naked as a jaybird, sporting a vaunting erection, and cooing gently to himself. The lady psychologist returns to her office (next to mine) looking a bit glassy-eyed, and is not very polite when the rest of us offer various suggestions as to how she should have responded to her not-so-secret admirer's advances.

Funny, the rest of the day seemed a bit anti-climactic...

[grampster]

I walked into the office the other day and everbody was actually working.

[Sylvilagus Aquaticus]

Late last year I worked a contract at a fed.gov/mil installation in far south Dallas. Lots of Brass are assigned there, so naturally there is a pretty nice restaurant and club on the top floor.  It's a tall building, on a promontory, and is the highest point for miles.   The dining facility of course has massive windows to afford the veiw of the horizon.  There is a flat roof outside the dining facility as the top floor is much smaller in area than the underlying structure.

Cutting to the chase-  this part of Texas is home to a remarkably large population of both the turkey vulture and the black vulture.  Both species prefer the security of high places, as they are large and ungainly birds when feeding on the ground- they're carrion eaters.   Many days during lunch, while enjoying the amenities of the fine dining at the O club, the diners were joined by the local avian population who would bring in a 'to-go lunch' to enjoy the view the patrons insde invariably and unhappliy shared with them.  

It was even more fun when they brought a date during the mating season.  


Regards,
Rabbit.

[griz]

We were working in  a control room in the middle of the night. The test we were running had even more instrumentation than normal, with most of the "extra" stuff in racks. These racks are about six feet tall and maybe a little over two feet square, full of meters, amplifiers, etc. So they weigh hundreds of pounds. Not to long after we started, one of the racks, the whole thing, started walking across the floor! After some speculation about "the ghost" that haunts us, we figured out the cables from the rack had been routed beside a shaft that drives a gearbox. Then somebody secured them to the shaft, not realizing it rotated. When that was moved, it reeled in the entire rack like a fish.  It wasn't so much scary as "what the ..?"

[Standing Wolf]

When I worked in San Mateo, the People's Republic of California, I occasionally saw waist-high deer outside my office windows. I have no idea whether they were fawns or full-grown adults. They looked like adults, but were awfully small. Perfectly unshy creatures they were, and delicate steppers, as well.

[RevDisk]

Cutting to the choice-  this part of Texas is home to a remarkably large population of both the turkey vulture and the black vulture.  Both species prefer the security of high places, as they are large and ungainly birds when feeding on the ground- they're carrion eaters.   Many days during lunch, while enjoying the amenities of the fine dining at the O club, the diners were joined by the local avian population who would bring in a 'to-go lunch' to enjoy the view the patrons insde invariably and unhappliy shared with them.

Ah.  You sure those windows weren't just mirrors?   Officers, vultures.  Very similiar species, you know.

[Azrael256]

While walking to work in early spring, I was accosted by a high-speed female duck.  Normally the ducks are a tad bit shy around humans, but this young lady came zipping past me, quacking up a storm, and actually brushed my trouser leg as she rocketed by.

Our ducks are not known for being terribly sociable with humans.  We don't feed them breadcrumbs, but they do like to hang out in the fountain, and will follow a carefully laid trail of cheeze-its all over campus.  College students always have cheese-its.  One particular mallard liked to sit at the corner of the fountain every morning.  I would walk by coming from class, say good morning, and he would quack at me.  That was as close as we got.  When people would get too close for comfort, they would usually waddle off.

I was quite puzzled as to why this normally shy creature had intentionally touched me.  I got my answer in short order.  She figured that I was less of a threat to her than what was after her, but that whatever was chasing her would be sufficiently afraid of me not to cross my path.  So what was after her?  Over the rise came a very aroused flock of male mallards, quacking, pushing, flapping, fluffing, and looking around for this evidently very attractive young lady duck.  So, being the chivalrous lad that I am, I could not stand idly by while this gang of ruffians threatened her virtue.  I put on my meanest looking face, flapped, squawked, and sallied forth into the middle of their formation shouting "SHOO, DUCK!  SHOO!"

...And then they exploded.  I don't mean in the sense of flying shrapnel, but rather fifteen ducks, all standing within three feet of me, suddenly taking flight.  At least two of them actually slammed into me when they took off.  Evidently a large, loud creature, working very hard to make a total ass of himself, is not much of a barrier to flight, even if he's right in front of you.  Nobody ever said ducks were smart.  I suspect that the lady duck was watching this with the same smugness exhibited by any female who gets men to fight over her.

So, I emerged from the shower of feathers and angry quacks to find that I had run to within twenty feet of the main exit to the building, where a large group of very attractive young ladies (human ladies, that is) had just come out of a dance class.  Realizing just what an idiot I looked like, I did the only thing I could.  I straightened my hat, snuffed out my cigarette, and walked into my office amid a chorus of mocking quacks.  I have yet to live this one down.

[mfree]

I came in one day to find that the entire facility was shut down because someone dropped a beaker full of methyl mercaptan... not really a hazard, but nobody could tell if there was a gas leak, since that's the stink they taint NG with in the pipelines!

[Stickjockey]

I saw an A-10 on the ANG ramp across the field from where I work yesterday. Does that count?

How about the Ford Trimotor I saw three weeks ago?