So, Amal, Teresa, Gabi, Quinn, Dave, my friend Amy from home, and I stuff the beaver costume into the large duffle bag in which it came and head out on the Red Line. We start singing on the T right away and amuse our fellow travellers. One of them, who was probably drunk from St. Patrick's Day festivities, becomes very curious as to what we're doing and what we have in the large duffle bag. (For the record, we were stone cold sober... I swear to God. It probably would have been less embarrassing if we could at least claim we were drunk.) We let him follow us to Harvard Yard and the John Harvard statue. (Side note: The statue of "John Harvard" is not actually John Harvard since no one knows what he looks like. It's actually an MIT alum.)

So, we pull out the costume, Amal puts it on, and the trouble begins. I don't know if you've ever tried to climb a statue while wearing a large furry beaver costume, but it's pretty difficult. The big furry hands and feet impede your ability to hold on. So, we did what seemed like the logical thing at the time and took them off and set them near the statue.

At this point in the story, Amal is perched on my shoulders humping John Harvard while Teresa helps support. Everyone else is back a little farther taking pictures or just watching. We're starting to draw a crowd of Harvardites and so we sing the anti-Harvard verses to the Engineer's Drinking Song:

"Yeah," he says to us, "Some guy picked it up and ran that way." What?! None of us saw it happen, except then Dave thinks maybe he did, but he can't describe the guy because it was dark. So we take a few seconds to curse ourselves and then decide to send out a search party. Amal minus Beaver costume, Dave, Quinn, and Gabi head off in the direction of the paw robber while Teresa, Amy, and I stay behind to guard the rest of the costume, now safely back in the bag. We tell the guys we'll give them an hour, and if they're not back, we're returning to MIT without them.

So, we park ourselves in front of John Harvard and start bemoaning our luck when we notice that the crowd of Harvardites is still hanging around. We overhear a few of them plotting to take the rest of the costume and we decide it's time to leave. Teresa, Amy, and I pick up the bag and start to head out.

It should be noted that Teresa is a Marine and trained in hand to hand combat.

Two Harvard wankers start to follow us out of the Yard.
Wanker 1: Hey, I think you should give us the costume.
Me: I really don't think so.
Wanker 2: C'mon, give us the costume.
Me: Yeah, um, NO!
Wanker 1: Well, if you don't give it to us, we'll just take it.
Me: I wouldn't recommend that. She's a marine.
Wanker 1: Yeah, right.
And being the typical drunk Harvard idiots they are, they ignore my warning and one of them jumps on the bag. Bad move.

Teresa proceeds to jump on top of our attacker and tells him to get off or she'll scream rape. He either doesn't believe her or doesn't hear her and continues trying to wrestle it away from her. The next thing I know, he jumps up and yells, "That was assault!" and he and his buddy scamper away. Teresa looks at Amy and I and says, "Let's get out of here now," and we make a bee line for the T station.

Me: Holy cow, Teresa, what did you do to him?
Teresa: For the record, if you ever need to get a guy off you, just grab his balls and twist.
Me: Do they teach that in the Marines?
Teresa: No, I have three brothers.

Teresa is my hero.

We get back to campus, tell everyone our tale of woe and hope the guys come back successful. They don't. We all agree that we're monumentally screwed. Not only that, but we've embarrassed MIT. The Ring Committee gets fined $650 and Amal sends out a plea to almost the entire undergraduate community asking for donations to help off set the fine. A Tech reporter gets wind of it and does a story on our little misadventure. We manage to become the laughing stock of campus, although Teresa's quotes ("They were pretty standard Harvard wankers.") prevent us from looking like complete morons. Luckily for us, the story doesn't end here.

Now, MIT looks really stupid. We lost the paw and we got shot down trying to get it back. Up steps John Fries, a friend of a friend. He decides that something clever must be done and gets the name of the Harvard kid from the Tech article done on Rhett's "attack." He calls him up and pretends to be a reporter from the Harvard Crimson. The Harvard student falls for his trap and agrees to meet him for a photo shoot. John buys himself a Harvard T-shirt and a disposable camera to complete the charade.

He arrives at the guy's dorm on a rainy Thursday afternoon and the kid eats it up. He really gets excited about being in the Crimson and has all his friends over. John takes a bunch of pictures and waits for the crowd to die down before making his move. He tells the Harvardites he wants to take some pictures out by the John Harvard statue and they agree and head outside into the rain. He asks the guys if he can hold the paw to set up some sort of artistic shot. They agree and give him the paw.

At which point he takes off running.

A wild goose chase ensues around Harvard Square and John manages to hide in some sort of alcove. He stays there for about twenty minutes, afraid they'll find him and beat him up. When he decides the coast is clear, he heads for his brother's apartment in Central Square and drops off the paw.

The good name of MIT is restored, John becomes a campus wide hero, and the Harvard kid feels like a schmuck. Unfortunately, the replacement paw has already been ordered and Amal and Ring Comm are still out $650. A real Harvard Crimson reporter writes an article and arrangements are made to put the paw in the MIT museum. Unbelievably, a newspaper in Portland, Oregon even runs a blurb on it. As John Fries put it, this was a great comedy for MIT and a great tragedy for Harvard.

After we heard he was from Harvard, we asked him if he had heard about the paw incident. "Heard about it?" he said, "I was there. My friend was the one who stole the paw."

We were flabbergasted.

His sister seemed unimpressed with MIT after that. It's all for the best, I suppose. She was more the Harvard type anyway.

Wankers.