On Tuesday Tony went down to the harbour at the bottom of the hill where he works and, with a colleague, set about catching a solitary little auk which had been reported swimming about there.
The little auk comes from Svalbard and is very rare in Denmark but Tony reckons it is not so rare and that people just don’t notice them. Anyway he and his colleague set out to catch this one and slap a ring on it and were just about to catch it when… an angry voice sounded from the quay in Danish to the effect ‘What the hell do you think you’re doing? You know that’s illegal. I’m taking a photograph of you and I’m going to report you to the police.’
Turned out that it was an eminent naturalist from a research lab nearby and that he could be persuaded that what Tony and Ebbe were doing was legitimate. He was probably most annoyed about his chances of taking a good photograph disappearing. But it set back their capture by a long time and they finally caught it after two hours.
Back at work Tony was congratulated by his new boss for being able to act spontaneously and have fun in the face of a never-ending pile of work. (This is not tongue in cheek – it is almost a health and safety issue).