The evening commute home was a scramble as people rushed and crushed onto the train fighting for a place to sit or stand.  A last-minute couple pushed through the door dropping tourist maps in their haste. Forced by the crowd to split up, the man went one way and the woman another.

The woman sat down in the last vacant seat next to where I stood and began to refold maps. Beside her sat a well-dressed business woman who appeared to read something work-related even after a day at the office. The two glanced briefly at each other, said nothing, and went back to their tasks of reading and map folding.

Things calmed as the train doors shut and people settled into seats or places to stand. As we waited for the train to depart, only the rustling of newspapers or the occasional ring of a cell phone could be heard…

*Oology: the study of eggs (distinctively a branch of ornithology that studies birds eggs)

When your favorite hobby as a child is oology and you spend your days searching for birds nests it is rather safe to say when you grow up you’ll want to work with birds and their eggs. That at least is how Howard came to work in the hatchery of his local zoo. It was bliss for him in the hatchery where he could really buckle into oology, after all there was a much larger variety of birds at the zoo then in his backyard.

And oology had its perks he found, when you worked in such a bizarre field all your coworkers would likely be just as ostracized and nutty as you. Not to mention unlike most people they would view your hobby as fun and interesting. It was a coworker such as this that…