Dana's Other Interests

I began enjoying birds in the wild (not as pets) in my junior year of high school in an advanced biology class. It was there that I first learned to identify a number of local birds and their calls. I soon discovered that I could do the call of a Great Horned Owl and began wishing I was one of the Piedmont Bird Callers and could be on the Late Show with David Letterman, but I'm not from California and they do much more complex calls than a Great Horned Owl. Nonetheless I have taken the Ornithology class at Grand Valley State University and enjoy feeding, listening to, and watching local birds. I would like to think calling Great Horned Owls and getting them to call back to me is impressive, but most of my friends end up afraid we will be attacked.

The following video of the Lyre Bird is one example of the amazing things birds can do. If you are interested in learning more about birds, I recommend borrowing David Attenborough's The Life of Birds from the library.

My passion for dinosaurs started with The Land Before Time movies that I watched as a young child. This love was fueled by family vacations where large dinosaur statues where present and

where there were small museums containing dinosaur fossils and facts. I still have a sticker book full of dinosaur stickers, and I still remember watching the television show Dinosaurs. To permanently display my affection, I have a Brontosaurus tattooed on my left forearm. Her name is Stella.

I grew up playing video games on the Nintendo Entertainment System that adorns my room to this day. One of my favorite

games is Mega Man VI in addition to the Super Mario Bros. games and of course, Tetris. A few summers ago I acquired a Nintendo 64, and have had the Nintendo Wii on my wish list for quite some time. I tend to stay away from computer games although I occasionally become addicted to the Sims, and recently mastered Left4Dead (four people trying to survive in a world of killer zombies). However, I am not adverse to playing games on the computer such as Solitaire, or playing games online such as Sudoku or through Face

book applications such as Scrabble. I have always also enjoyed board games and card games. Hedbanz, an early 1990's game of "identity crisis" has been popular among my friends and I. When board games or a deck of cards is unavailable, I enjoy doing word searches and Sudoku.

I have always been a fan of cats. My family has had a cat since I was 5, but we have only ever had two cats. Katie lived to be 16 years old, and Dotson Jennings is now just about a year old. When I live in an apartment complex that allows pets, I would like to get two cats. I will probably get them from Crash's Landing, a no-kill cat shelter in Grand Rapids. I also thoroughly enjoy a daily laugh via Lolcats.