The Undergrads (With apologies to A.H.)

On a college campus, you don't really need a calendar to know when it's the end of the semester because suddenly, as though summoned by zombie mind-control radiowaves, the undergrads are in the library. 15 weeks out of the semester, the library is dead, boring, quiet, and empty. But on the 16th week, it turns into a scene from "The Birds." There are undergraduates everywhere: every chair at every table is occupied, every study carrel filled, every computer taken, every bathroom stall inhabited. Unsuspecting grad students wander into the library -- which they do whether it's Spring Break or the day after Saint Patrick's Day or any given Sunday -- and have to step around the sprawled bodies, trying not to disturb whatever crazy equilibrium the undergrads have established with their hidden coffee mugs and their iPods and the books you know they've only just cracked today. The stacks are alive! Where did they come from??? Quickly now... just get your book... try not to antagonize them... that's right... now check it out, slowly, slowly... and... Now! Make a break for it!! Run! Run for your lives!!