the coot and i

The weirdness that is my life goes on unabated. I came back from the gym to the department at 10:15 pm, only to come face to face with an immature coot in front of the Gilbert building. It was probably dispersing from a nearby nest, perhaps near Lagunita and was attracted by the lights. I jumped off the bike and ran after it. I thought I saw a leg band. It ran towards the bike rack and leapt off to the receiving area's parking lot 5 m below. it sat there, dazed and i biked around the building and down into the lot, when it took off running behind the cars and then the massive trash bins. i banged on them, the coot ran into nook 2 feet tall. i crouched and entered but it ran right past me at what felt like 20 km/hour, a fat gray thing with stuby wings, legs of an ostrich, and feet of a clown. i kept running after it in the parking lot, hoping a cop would not come down and see me in biking tights and a tanktop running after a flightless bird. the bastard then entered the dense thicket on the way down to the lot. it is 5 by 15 meters and pretty impenetrable. i looked at the ground level and pushed my way in, getting scratched in the process. i kept making a racket, hoping to drive it towards the other end where there is a wall and it is less open. i was below the windows of the chemistry building and it occurred to me that if a cop came then, it'd be very hard to explain what i was doing there (i am looking for a flightless waterbird that somehow got here in the middle of the night and that you cannot see right now). i finally got him trapped at the other end but it ran back and forth and my flying tshirt missed it. it went back to the dense end and i decided that only running through it like an elephant could maybe scare it. after some minutes of searching, i finally gave up at 10:45 and popped out of the 2 meter tall thicket, only to come face to face with a thin blond girl leaving her lab. A Middle Eastern man in tights and a tanktop that pops out of a thicket in a dark parking lot in the middle of the night is every woman's nightmare and just as i was waiting for her to scream, i saw the young coot sitting on the pavement between the two of us and shouted "catch him!" and ran after the bird. She flailed her arms not much different than the coot flailed its stubby wings as it took off running again, but this time i was determined. the coot was cornered and just as it turned away to run again, i threw my tshirt over it and my aim was accurate. as the girl looked at me in shock and awe, i explained that this was probably a dispersing juvenile from a nearby pond. i was disappointed to see that what i thought was a leg band was just the leg shining in the light. i took him to my office and put it in a dark box to release it tomorrow morning at a nearby pond.