Almost all residents of Edens are familiar with “The Stork.”
“That’s what we used to call it,” said Pryanka Krishnan, a junior year Edens resident.
It turns out that the “stork” is actually a great blue heron, a large wading bird found near open water and wetlands over North America, the Caribbean, and the Galápagos islands.
However, Deanna Badger, a fellow junior resident, knew this from the very beginning.
“When [Deanna and I] first saw it, we were walking together, and I saw this shadow of this weird thing with a beak. And I’m like, ‘Whoa! A stork,’” Krishnan explained. “And [Deanna's] like…that is a great blue heron.”
Badger’s heavily forested hometown of Dubois, Pennsylvania familiarized her to different types of wildlife.
“We have them where I live in Pennsylvania. They’re really common, awesome, and majestic,” she said. “I suspect it’s eating some of the fish that live in the little stream that runs under the bridge because I’ve identified some blue gills and minnows. Great blue herons primarily feed on fish, so there’s a good food source right by our dorm.”
Diverse wildlife is the highlight of Edens, which is traditionally the least popular dorm on West Campus for its location.
“Edens is definitely a place where you feel closer to nature…That’s actually kind of the draw of Edens—the wildlife they have. I’ve found frogs, worm, snakes, a bunch of different species of moths and of course squirrels.”
“We have a resident squirrel that feeds from the trash cans,” Krishnan noted.
Below: the American toad of Edens and the Edens Imperial Moth.
However, the abundance of wildlife may be in jeopardy if the Edens Beatifucation Project—set to begin in 2015—will require radical changes. Krishnan and Badger have detected a potential threat.
“There are people surveying, and there are a bunch of tripods up,” said Krishnan.
It is unclear exactly what the upcoming changes to Edens dorm will be.
“Probably one of the things Edens has going for it compared to the other dorms, is that it has it’s own kind of unkempt natural feel,” said Badger. “They don’t do a lot of manicuring of the lawn or landscaping, and I hope that’s not their plans for the [beatification] project that’s going on because there’s a lot of species that might be impacted if they try to make it look like the rest of campus."
All photographs were taken by Deanna Badger and her family.
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