Week 7: Book Thieves & Squirrels

Last week was not a good week for me. For those of you who are my friends on Facebook, you might have seen my status update about the books that were stolen from my TA office. Sorry for the rerun.

When I came in to my office last Tuesday afternoon, I noticed right away that the stack of books on the shelf next to my desk was shorter than it should have been, I knew right away that my Human Osteology book and The Human Bone Manual were missing. I started asking around to see if someone had borrowed them and forgot to tell me. Nope. I talked to the ladies in our department office, they didn't know anything. One of the other grad students who shares on office with me showed up and said there had been a "book buyer" in the office. He said he worked for the University and was told he could look at the books on the top shelf in our office. The grad student left the office. No one knew who this book buyer was. There is no university book buyer. One of the other grads students saw the man and could describe him. Apparently he comes around every so often and takes whatever books he finds. He doesn't talk to anyone much and no one knows his name or where is he from. I figured out that another of my books was missing as well (Research Methods for Anthropology) before I left my office for the day.

Back in my dorm, I searched our room for the missing books. Nada. And then I realized that I had left a newly borrowed library book on my desk on top of my research binder the day before. I had just picked it up from the library on Monday. It's called Carrion Ecology, Evolution and their Applications. It was borrowed from another university. Where was that? My roommate and I went back to my office to look.  It was gone as well. It had a paper label across that front that said it was a library book. There was no doubt now that the "book buyer" knew he was stealing when he took my books. Those four books will be more than $300 to replace.

It sounds silly, but I feel like my anatomy books are irreplaceable. I was very attached to those books. They got me through Keller's bone quiz. Kenna and I used them for forensic anthro. I used them for my directed study and for my osteology workshop in Europe.

The library was able to reorder me a copy of the book on carrion ecology. There was one other copy at another university in Oregon. I will have to pay for the missing book when the due date gets here and I cannot return it.

Campus police did not give me much hope that they will be able to recover my book. Actually, he said no, he did not think they would. I have been haunting book websites and the campus bookstore has been alerted. There's nothing else to be done. It's a bummer, but moving on...

I have a full thesis committee and will be applying for candidacy. I will begin data collection very soon.

I am talking Human Osteology in the Fall. (I need those bone books.) I will also take thesis credits that allow me to be full time while working on my thesis. I am hoping to TA Intro to BioAnth as well.

My classes are going well. It's only a few weeks until finals. I have a presentation the week before finals for History of Anth, but no other finals. My stats students have their final during finals week.

I have to be moved out of my dorm by 6pm on June 10th.

Speaking of dorms, our suite mate Jessica yelled "It finally happened!" from her room the other night. The thing that finally happened is a squirrel came through her window and made a buffet out of her trash can. It rifled through the trash, spreading it all over and ate the remains of an avocado on her desk chair. We are calling the little guy Guacamole. We don't have screens on our dorm windows. My room mate Crystal thumb tacked screen over ours a long time ago, so we haven't had any visitors except for the occasional gnat. Jessica screened her window using our left over screen. It's a good thing she did because the squirrel came back the next morning. It tried to get in and she had to bark at it to make it go away. lol!