First stop on our campus tour

If you ever make it out to the University of Michigan for some reason, you really ought to walk through the law quad. It’s probably the University’s proudest architectural stop on campus tours of what is not actually a very interesting college campus, and (lucky me) I get to walk through it every day, at least twice, on my way to and from campus. I’ve been here nearly a year and a half now and it’s still my favorite part of my mile-long commute, although if you saw the rest of my commute (particularly the part where I walk by the lumber yard and over the railroad tracks) you’d think that wasn’t saying much. So I googled a picture to convince you that it really is worth seeing.

Other than the haze of smoke and the cigarette butts strewn around the steps to the law library (and there are always law students out there on a smoking break), the law quad is a really pleasant place to be at any time of year. There’s a wide lawn crisscrossed with stone walkways and lined with tall, stately trees, and architecture that reminds me of a medieval cloister (which I’ve visited) but is probably more reminiscent of an old European university, like Cambridge (which I haven’t). There are always squirrels poking at the ground or racing each other up the tree trunks, and in the summer there are usually students out studying on the grass, with an occasional engagement photo shoot or two.

But the law quad is not the subject of this post. It’s just the setting. A long introduction to a pretty short story. On Monday about mid-afternoon the weather was starting to turn. I thought it might be nice to have a chilly 2-minute car ride awaiting me when I got out of class at seven instead of a freezing 20-minute walk, and so I walked home while it was still light out to drive my car up to the Institute building and to take a break from my studies. When I walked through the law quad, I noticed immediately that there were more people there than usual and that, stranger still, they were not walking hurriedly to class or clustered around a tour guide, but stood lined up along the edges of the pathways at the southwest end of the lawn. It was sort of an odd gathering and after just a second of disorientation, I realized that they were all looking at something at the base of a tree. I followed their gaze and saw…a squirrel.

That is, I saw a squirrel splayed out on the lawn, a large gash on its neck, and a hawk digging resolutely at its internal organs. There was a collective gasp as the hawk lifted its head revealing its bloody beak and gazed around, as though wondering what the big fuss was.

I didn’t stop because I didn’t really have time, but I was as fascinated as everyone else. It wasn’t that it was gruesome (I don’t know that I’ve ever actually seen a bird of prey with its fresh kill on anything other than National Geographic films, and I suspect I’m not alone). Actually, I experienced an odd sense that it was oddly normal and abnormal simultaneously, like the bird had been caught in the embarrassing situation of doing something entirely appropriate in an entirely inappropriate place, without knowing that he had accidentally run amok with social convention. His glance up at us with blood dripping from his beak seemed not menacing, but curious and bemused. It almost seemed unfair that we were all staring—had it been a person caught in embarrassing public behavior, we would have all averted our eyes and thought (a bit uncomfortably), you know, he just doesn’t know any better.

The carcass of the squirrel was covered up by the snow that night, and then uncovered when the snow melted two days later, but somebody must have come by and tactfully removed the remains of the hawk’s dinner, because the squirrel is gone now. And if you come out here and visit the law quad, you probably won’t see anything more entertaining than law student smoking on the steps of the library or a (slightly more cautious) squirrel burying an acorn by the sprinkler-head. Sorry. It's still worth seeing.