Few people can say that they shoveled goat poop for science.
Aidan Doherty is one of them. An incoming junior at Northeastern University from Lowell, Massachusetts, he spent his six-month co-op cleaning up animal barns, making hard-boiled eggs for opossums, and taking an old turkey vulture named Orvo for a walk in the sun twice a day.
He said he loved the time he spent on the 291-acre Massachusetts Audubon Society’s Drumlin Farm Wildlife Sanctuary in the metro-Boston town of Lincoln, even when a wild wood duck named Frank would charge at him, waddling fast to gnaw on the toe of his shoe with its bill full of fury.
The duck attack in the aviary “was a daily thing,” Doherty, 20, said. “It didn’t hurt. The duck just thinks he’s a lot bigger than he is.”
Doherty’s coop was part of his environmental science work toward a bachelor of science degree in environmental and sustainability sciences from Northeastern.
Read more at Northeastern Global News
Photo by Matthew Modoono/Northeastern University
