Bambi

It had been hours of giving presentations to 11 year olds, hoping they wouldn't get too bored, that they would absorb the information, even if these sorts of things seemed silly or stupid to them. The school was shiny, new, decked out with fancy lighting fixtures and desks not yet marred by discarded chewing gum or stray pen marks, but it was far from our city-skewed definition of civilization and there was no cell phone coverage.

"These kids are like home to me," I thought to myself as I tried not to laugh too hard at their insubordinate jokes. They were smart. Many of them really were paying attention.

After lunch and becoming a bit worried by the motto which (unwittingly?) was a play on the title of the infamous Birth of a Nation, I returned to our classroom to notice a family of deer grazing outside of the window. A buck (a 4 pointer, my colleagues guesstimated, barely old enough to copulate), a doe, and a fawn...later joined by another doe. They looked around often but ate easily, glancing at us without fear as we stared.