By: Juhee Goyal, Proctor, Harvard College '22
We first met Helen’s not-so-tiny anymore bamboo plant Cedar, orchid with the prettiest purple flowers ever Christina, and her Dad’s succulent called… you guessed it… Dad’s Succulent! Who said pets have to be animals?! Helen’s love for her plant pets was contagious and spurred Anna Kate to show off her fish Anita! Anita, with her temporary popcorn bowl home is a frequent flyer on Southwest airlines where she gets the VIP treatment from TSA officers while she’s chillin in her jar of water. With an amazing story of how Anita was adopted and treated for her skin condition we learnt that she’s getting an (impulse bought) tank to live in soon! We somehow went back to the subject of succulents for a bit where Helen also showed off the cactus that Walmart conned them into buying. It had a fake flower on it! Anjali pubbed Michaels for a bit about their amazing and no-maintenance fake succulents (they look like the real deal!).
Marcus let us know that Aarushi had a secret collection of dozens of Stitches and of course we made her show them off! We pondered the implications of a room filled with Stitches if toys really do come to life without humans around? Would they go into an existential crisis like Buzz Lightyear did in Toy Story? Stay tuned for Marcus’ soon-to-be-published paper answering this topic! In Kevin’s background, we could see a huge Winnie-the-Pooh plushie that honestly 3 year old Pooh fanatic me would’ve been so jealous about (just kidding, I’m still jealous!).
I, with my ever incessant (and borderline annoying) stories of my companion cockatiels Niboo (means lemon in Hindi!), Heddu, and Quinnie, also showed off my many stuffed animals and animal figurines, including one I got on my first birthday! We then saw Anna Kate’s maybe-manatee Snorp which she bought off an instagram ad, but, the actual species of the plushie is yet to be determined. Snorp does have an extremely cute seal sibling too!
Come by next week to meet my birds (they’re finally going to make an appearance!), and meet more of HSURV’s furry, feathered, leafy, green, and plushy friends!