Most fecal matter in doggie doo station on campus are from a single, unlocated northern white rhino.
On Sept. 18, for the first time since its installation, the pet waste station located on the north side of Dietler Commons filled to its limit. Typically, the receptacle has its bowels emptied on a weekly basis, so this kind of occurrence will not happen. Officials did not question the event too much at the time, as this deliverance from filth usually occurs on Mondays and a week had passed in which area pet owners could have hypothetically contributed enough to make such a sizable quantity. However, when the freshly emptied bin exceeded its limits the following Wednesday, Sept. 22, reports show that President Carson himself paid a surprise visit to the spectacle and formed a secret task force of faculty and staff to investigate the issue.
The Collegian’s anonymous informant at the aptly-named John appeared in-person at the scene and discovered early some interesting facts about the case. In the 400 page dossier given to The Collegian and eventually subpoenaed by the university president for his task force, the informant writes that he “instantly knew something was wrong. I’ve seen some big dogs in my life, many of the largest during my time at TU, but I don’t know of any dog that could produce that amount of excrement in a fortnight, much less in a stroll or two about campus.” He went on to conclude that such a mass must have come from either seven scores of dogs releasing three days of backlogged work or a land mammal the size of a tank.
After the subpoena of his report, the editorial staff at The Collegian collectively witnessed an attempt at a covert testing of the collected material. On Sunday, Sept. 26, two masked men carted a covered wheelbarrow by the door of The Collegian’s office and slowly fought to move it up the stairs. The foul stench and abandoned crumbs confirmed suspicions as to the content of the concealed materials. Five hours later, our Editor-in-Chief saw the two leaving with an empty wheelbarrow, with one of the two remarking to the other that “I see no way in hell that someone could have a male northern white rhino on this campus, but the data seem conclusive.” He then threw away a pile of papers (importantly, he did not recycle them), which The Collegian staff then scrutinized to corroborate these overheard claims.
For those in the dark on the issue, the northern white rhino, a white rhino subspecies, is extinct in the wild, with the last two living members, both female, living under strong protection. The presence of one on campus seems fantastical at best, but the idea that a male one, a potential savior to his species, resides within a short vicinity of Dietler Commons grants hope to animal activists everywhere. Students are encouraged to report any evidence they encounter that may assist in locating the northern white rhino, such as large and unused cafeteria spaces that could be used to house the animal, massive bug populations in campus housing that would indicate the potential nearby presence of such a large creature, or a smell in a dormitory not dissimilar to a gas leak that could accompany the mammal.
