The Rock as zoo specimen

Late in 2021 a fence built around King Chapel entrapped The Rock. The fencing was necessary during repair work on the chapel. However, it kept Cornellians from one of their favorite activities: painting The Rock. 

We then had what appeared to be a Rock in a zoo enclosure—especially since our clever chemical stockroom manager, Belou Quimby ’19, used her imagination to create a species label and affixed it to the fence. For a few days the sign remained a mystery. Then someone leaked the truth, after which the Cornell bubble burst with the news and it came out in the Campus Newsletter.

“This species exhibits a variety of social behaviors,” reads the label, “as it can be found letting students paint it a variety of different colors, swimming in Ink Pond on hot summer days, burrowing under the earth for years at a time, being on fire surrounded by other species, and performing a seemingly random migration to Coe and back.”

The entrapment ended suddenly one day in mid-April when Facilities staff moved the fence so The Rock was just outside its perimeter. 

Perhaps it wasn’t such a bad thing. Both King Chapel and The Rock arrived on campus in the 1880s, and so much has happened since. They enjoyed a little down time together for a few months. Old Sem, with only one wall blocked by the fencing, may have been jealous of their shared respite though, since she was there first.

Read Quimby’s full realistic species label (it’s worth it).