Today was the end of what felt like a short week. Although I'm exhausted and tired, mainly because I've been staying up late every night to finish my Honor's thesis, Faux Foxes: Fox Domestication and Pet Ownership, this week seemed to go by pretty quickly and it was enjoyable. I'm glad it's the weekend, so I can continue working on my thesis, though. Today was another standard Fitness Friday. The morning began with a Friday assembly, then we had a shortened 2nd-Grade class to start off the day of gym classes. Unfortunately, because a huge storm blew in this morning, there were tremendous amounts of water and puddles outside that prevented us from using the outdoor space for the students. Fortunately, this did allow me to see a new game.

The other day, Dianne Odegard, from Bat Conservation International, visited my Nature & the Quest for Meaning to discuss bats. After giving a PowerPoint presentation about the myths and misconceptions of bats, Dianne asked us to create poetry about the winged beasts. She challenged us to team up with the person next to us and create a haiku about the unusual mammals and submit them to the Bat Conservation website afterwards.

Since 1959, the Institute of Cytology and Genetics of the Russian Academy of Sciences in Novisibirsk, Russia has attempted to domesticate the red fox, Vulpes vulpes, in order to better understand the domestication of the dog, Canis familiaris, from the gray wolf, Canis lupus. The criteria for breeding foxes were those that consistently displayed tame behavior with respect to people. Within just 10 generations of selectively bred foxes, the animals began to show dramatic changes within their behavior, communication, development, physiology, reproduction, and anatomy, demonstrating a genetically domesticated breed of fox. The ICG has since commercialized the Farm-Fox Experiment and offers domesticated foxes for sale as pets.

There's a lot of people out there who care about me...There's my mom and dad, grandparents, brother, aunt, cousin, best friends, Internet friends, school friends, boyfriend, and even close family friends that aren't even related to me. I'm pretty much surrounded by love.