Animals at Williams College

On the estate, on the grounds was an abundance of bird life and animal visitors who lived wild in the Berkeley hills.  In the rentals, residents kept companion animals of cats, dogs, Belgian rabbits.  Everyone loved animals there.  And stray cats would occasionally visit me and hop in the open window of my place, which was over 12 feet above ground level and come hang out a bit.

One evening at home in my basement flat I had cooked a large casserole of tricolored noodles and left it on the stove  to cool, with the window open.  I laid down and fell asleep as sleep was rare for me then, and intermittent when it arrived.  I kept awaking to sounds of small clinking and paid no mind and fell back into my slumbers.  When I awoke, the casserole dish was empty.

Another time, I had installed a Christmas tree and made garlands of popcorn and cranberries on string.  I went away for the holiday, and when I returned I found all the cranberries missing and only the popcorn left.

I would hear thumping in the storage room now and again.

Apparently a possum lived in the storage room, a fact I found out from the essential oil compounder who'd pushed her way into the estate.  She had seen the possum in the apartment and arranged to have the creature poisoned and killed.  She told me this much to my horror and anger.  She was soon in less than two months gone from the estate of her own volition as she had opened a storefront in San Francisco, too far for an easy commute from Berkeley, and she soon went out of business.

When Esther Dyson moved into the estate in 1963, she carried a pet praying mantis all the way from the East Coast, a long cross country auto trip with her mom at the wheel, her brother in the passenger seat, and Esther in the back seat with boxes and clothes.  And the praying mantis was traveling along in a little box with holes cut out in the lid and Esther would feed and care for the mantis along the way. Esther's mom got a job for the summer teaching math at Berkeley.  She recalled Dr. Hopkins in a kindly way.