Ram-nado
Illustration by Nathan Varney.
Dylan Hostetter, Executive Editor
The weather and I have always had an antagonistic relationship. Throughout my entire life, I’ve had birthday parties cancelled for rain, lost baseball caps in the wind and even had a cat once get struck by lightning. It was probably because my brother was feeding him all those pennies, but it was tragic nonetheless.
My less-than-positive relationship with weather sadly followed me here to VCU — though I never expected it to be this extreme. I knew trouble was brewing when I got the VCU Alert about a tornado warning. I went downstairs to find my roommate laying under a “Cars” blanket in the bathtub.
“I guess you saw the VCU Alert,” I said. “I don’t think this will protect you from a tornado.”
“There’s a tornado?”
Whether or not there was, I refused to shelter in place — Mother Nature had hassled me for long enough. It was time I took a stand. As I ran outside, I could see clouds beginning to swirl in the sky. They looked like cotton candy, only evil. Evil cotton candy — how could such a horrible image be conjured in my brain?
The weather seemed to be aware of my resistance, as once the funnel of the tornado began to reach down from the sky, the storm moved over VCU Agriculture’s newly installed ram sanctuary and petting zoo. What seemed like a good idea to boost school spirit and save some animals was about to turn into a nightmare.
I remember visiting the sanctuary once. I was a bit aggravated that VCU had decided to remove funding from all student organizations in order to build it — I think the most they gave the English club was a box of Kit Kats for the entire semester — but those rams were so darn cute and soft.
The tornado wasted no time in destroying the entire facility. Before I had time to mourn the loss of all those rams, I noticed something: The tornado had sucked them all up. They were part of it now, fused with the whirling winds. It was a ram-nado.
I had heard of something like this before; I believe it was a tornado full of whales? Dolphins? I couldn’t remember. Nonetheless, it was a bad situation. A tornado of flying fish is one thing, this was a bunch of agitated, horned rams heading directly towards campus. It could have caused more devastation than the time the Commons was unable to sell fountain drinks.
I knew I had to do something; after all, it was my defiance of nature that caused this insane catastrophe. But what did I have the power to do? How was I supposed to stop an entire tornado? Why did my roommate have a “Cars” blanket? That was it: my roommate! He was minoring in meteorology, he would know how to stop it.
“No, meat-ology,” he said from under the blanket. “I have no clue how to stop a tornado.”
“What is meat-ology?”
“The study of meats and cheeses, though without the cheese,” he said. “I’m up for a job at Jersey Mikes and it’s going to look great on my resume.”
I abandoned that idea and ran back outside. At that time, I could see the ram-nado touching down on campus. VCU basketball was playing George Mason in a sold-out Siegel Center. The tornado ripped through the stadium’s roof with ease, sucking a sea of black-and-gold t-shirt-wearing fans into its windy, hoof-filled maw. I hadn’t seen that much destruction at the Siegel Center since the Rams last faced the Richmond Spiders.
The ram-nado then made a b-line straight for me. I could see the poor VCU fans bouncing around, dangling themselves off of the rams’ horns. Once I realized it was following me, I got an idea and headed straight for Monroe Park — it was the only safe place to sequester the ram-nado.
Along the way, the ram-nado picked up a few straggling pedestrians and students that I couldn’t alert in time. I tried to stop one guy from walking right into the ram-nado, but refused my warnings.
“Miss Merrywhether didn’t believe I had pneumonia, but she’ll sure believe this,” he said, before running right into the cyclone.
There is no scientific evidence that tornados can be stopped, so all I could think to do was bunker down inside the Espresso A Go Go and wait for the ram-nado to end. I could hear the bleats of the rams and the clack of their horns into the night until I drifted off to sleep.
In the morning, all was silent. I walked out of the brick building to find a serene scene — Monroe Park littered with calm rams feeding on dewy morning grass. The Siegel Center fans were still there, shaken but calmed by petting the rams’ thick coats. The air was uncharacteristically warm for February.
I was happy everything was calm and no one got hurt. To treat my success, I walked to a nearby ice cream stand and picked up a cone. As I went to take my first bite, the wind blew the scoops right out of the cone. Mother Nature just can’t give me a win.
Editor’s Note: The characters and events depicted in this story are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
