The answer is a resounding “who cares?”
That may seem underwhelming, and “may seem” implies that there’s a chance it whelms, but if you kill the fox, then it really doesn’t matter what the fox says. The fox is dead, its carcass worth maybe four shillings. Naturally, the sensible thing to do next is to burn through over a thousand pounds (wasting the time of the Court) for who owns the dead fox.
As I write this, I’m sitting in the LRC after my first day of Property with Prof. Kahan. Her consistent mispronunciations of my surname aside (not mad, Lithuanian is tricky), it was a fun first class. We discussed five theories (Prof. Kahan prefers “lenses”) through which property rights are derived.
We then began to discuss Pierson v. Post, 3 Cai. R. 175 (1805). Post was chasing a fox with his hunting dogs on public land, but Pierson swooped in and killed the fox before Post could. Post argued that he called dibs, that he pursued the fox with a “reasonable prospect” of killing it, and therefore it was his; by contrast, Pierson argued that you need to take “actual corporeal possession” (e.g. trapping the fox, mortally wounding it) for it to be yours, or in layman’s terms: finder’s keepers, loser’s weepers. And argue they did, taking this dispute all the way up to the Supreme Court of New York and blowing massive amounts of money in the process. Tompkins’ opinion is comically overstuffed, recalling the Code of Justinian among others. Livingston’s dissent, meanwhile, rails against the “wild and noxious beast” and extols the social good of fox hunting.
Personally, I’m calmer than I was last night. I broke down again once I returned to my apartment. I know it basically just happened, that it’s normal to feel Big Feelings™, but I need a better outlet. I wish I weren’t hit by the 1L relationship curse, though. It sucks, 0/10, no notes. I’ve written some poems, but I don’t think I should share them. I’m really not a good poet, regardless of what she used to say.
I have Criminal Law later this afternoon, and I actually have a physical textbook for it. Hopefully, I get the others soon; the delay is a pain in the rear. Speaking of pains in the rear, for Legal Methods, we have concepts of a plan regarding the issue for this semester’s brief. I wish I could get going on it already, not just reading the two sample cases given. The preliminary research report is due on MLK Day and… well, I wanna get it done before my birthday. But I also wanna go out Friday night and do literally anything other than staying holed up at Anova. So that gives me Thursday night and Friday afternoon to hammer something out, presumably after drinking enough energy drinks to achieve theosis.
I was just about to publish when I remembered I had seen Primate (dir. Johannes Roberts, 2026) last Friday. The premise is fairly simple: a pet chimp gets rabies and goes bananas. I know I say this a lot about horror movies, but Primate was one of the funniest movies I’ve seen in a while. Not really that scary; the audio going from quiet to ear-bleeding loud guarantees at least a startle. The biggest fault with the movie is that everyone acted like an idiot. Like, the killer is a smart chimp, but he’s still, y’know, a chimpanzee. And since said chimp was often smarter than the human characters, I found myself rooting for him. The action was admittedly quite good, but I wish the spectacle/gore was clearer; the cinematography and editing mean that some of the more visceral scenes are in shadow, or cut away from. They hyped up the violence in the advertising. Mild disappointment aside, it was a lot of fun and a needed pick-me-up in these interesting times.
Sierpinski Tetrahedron 