She shrugged. "I guess so," she said, referring to the comment about It being a good name for a Pygmy Puff. She honestly had just named it that, because she could care less about giving the tiny creature a name.

Sierra peered over at the girl's parchment. "Well, some of that really doesn't relate to a Pygmy Puff, especially the whole 'less than five feet' part'. I think it's more like...less than six inches," she said with a smirk. "At least it's something to go on. Maybe we can chalk it up to be a tiny puff with a size similar to a dwarf." Or...something.

She looked back at the list of questions they needed to answer:

STUFF WE WANT TO KNOW

• exception to the Ban on Experimental Breeding???
• eat what???
• why are they so adorable???
• can be trained to NOT eat snot???
• what does pygmy mean???
• how does one discover a puff's gender???
• what magical properties do they possess??

"What do they eat?" she wondered out loud. "Maybe tiny pieces of lettuce or other plants..." She scribbled that into her notes. "Ewww...eat snot? Sickening little creatures..." She moved on quickly, not even wanting to think about that. "I don't think they have magical properties. Maybe they're just a magical creature than can only exist in a magical world. Maybe they don't...actually...do anything." You know, other than sit on shoulders and eat snot.

Cardigan picked up Giovanni off of her shoulder and plopped him into her hand.Giovanni would be a he;that was final!"So,how are we gonna start off?"she asked Angelina,not really knowing what to do.I mean,Angelina was the educated 2nd year here so she knew best.Hopefully....

Minerva looked at her parchment. She wrote down no magic next to the Puffskeins.

Parchment

"So what else could we do to try and see if the puff has any magic?"

"Flippert"Olivia told her. He was one of the ones from the box.Flippert jumped out of Olivias hands and onto the hay bail. Maybe he wanted to meet squishy.
So, I guess we should get started, Olivia said.

Alyssa couldn't help but giggle when she heard that Taylor had tried to feed it hair. "Well thank goodness, it doesn't like hair. I don't fancy sleeping and waking up one day to find out I've lost all my hair. Okay, so we can scratch hair of the list. Let me check what else we can try feeding it."Alyssa told Taylor pulling out the list that they had created.



"Well we have rats, carrots, nose boogers, cookies we can try feeding our Puffs. Or we can add to the list. What else? Paper? Did we try grass? What about worms? Jello? Pudding? Pie? We can add that to the list. I could always run up to the castle and get some more food from the House Elves in the kitchen and run back down here again, while you're feeding whatever you can find. I draw a big no no on live rats, so maybe the Professor has some dead one in the food supply shed for the animals here. But before I forget let me add more stuff to the list." Alyssa told Taylor, quickly adding the suggestions to their growing list.



"Alright. We're set. I'm going to run up to the castle and grab more food and I'll be back in a jiffy."Alyssa looked for the Professor to ask permission to leave the barnyard to get the food. She didn't want to lose house points for not doing that.

Lily nodded. "Yep." She nodded as Jezz introduced her Pygmy puff. "That's a good name." Lily said grinning, before focusing on the task at hand. "We can try to figure that out. Do you have any idea where to start? Because I don't have a clue." Lily said chuckling a bit. She had never worked with magical or possibly magical creatures before, so she had no clue what to start with.

Oakey starred down at the "Leftover" Pygmy Puffs. His eyes grazed over a Yellow one then a Green one then another one that was Purple like Batman and a Red one like Gideon's. Oakey's eyes must have gone back and forth like he was trying to find the forever evasive golden snitch in the pile of puff balls.

He looked to Gideon who was still looking for anything to call a gender difference. This is a hopeless cause. I think it's safe to say it's impossible to tell if these little things are male or female.

"Of course I do,'' Jory replied "I see you in our common room and classes. Don't tell me you've never seen me?''


"That's really disgusting they eat snot,'' he agreed. "So, how about we move away from the disgusting stuff? Who knows, maybe they like something normal,'' Jory said laughing. "Any ideas what we could feed them?'' he asked Sophie. "I've got potato salad and a chicken sandwich in my bag. And an apple.''

"I uh... yes, I have!" Jory's face looked familiar indeed, but she couldn't recall actually seeing him around. Maybe she saw him in the Common Room a couple of times but never... "registered" it. "Anyway, it's nice officially meeting you then!" Grin.

Sophie nodded. It was not possible that they ate only gross stuff. Not possible! But what? And how were they supposed to figure that out?

Whoa! He had a lot of food in his bag! Sophie chuckled. "We could try feeding them, if you don't mind wasting your food." Not exactly wasting, of course, they would be feeding those adorable creatures and making them happy! "I've got some chocolate frogs here!" She added, getting one out of her bag. She opened it and offered it to her Pygmy Puff. It sniffed and licked it a bunch of times, but didn't actually eat it. Did that mean her Pygmy Puff didn't eat chocolate or it just didn't want it now? It had licked it...

Frowning, Sophie looked back at Jory. "What do you think this means?"

"Nice to meet you officially too, Sophie," Jory said grinning.

Turning his attention back to Furball, Jory gently took him in his hand and lowered him onto the ground. He sat cross legged next to his Puff and watched as Sophie offered a bit of Chocolate Frog to her Puff. Jory was interested to see it only licked the chocolate but he was puzzled as Sophie at the Puff's reaction. "Maybe it likes chocolate but not too much?'' he suggested. ''What do you think?''

"Lets try the apple first,'' Jory said breaking a small bit of his apple. He held it in front of Furball who sniffed it and then in a flash, the apple piece vanished into its mouth. "Look at that,'' Jory said ''He likes apples.'' Jory fed it another piece.

Sophie looked from her Puff to her Puff friend (heh!). "I think it could eat it, but it just... doesn't want it now, I guess." Or not. Who knew! She was still holding the chocolate frog in front of her Pygmy Puff and it was still licking it. "It seems to likes it, though!"

Then she watched as Jory fed his own Puff. Aawwwww!!! She smiled widely when the apple piece vanished into the creature's mouth. "That was so adorable!!!" She said, still letting her Puff - which definitely needed a name - lick the chocolate frog. "What else did you say you had in your bag?"

Glenn saw an older student making her way for her she listened as the girl introduced herself, "I'm Glenn." She nodded, "And this is Elliott." Glenn gestured towards her deep purple pygmy puff that was making squeaks as it untangled itself from her curls. She helped it do so, chuckling as it wove its way deeper into her hair. "Hold still a minute." Glenn muttered, untangling her pygmy puff from her blonde curls and placing him in her lap where he would hopefully not find a way to tangle something.

"Do you know if you can tell the gender?" She asked Stella, looking criptictcally at her pygmy puff as he (Or she thought he was a he) rolled around her lap, playing in the folds of her grey school skirt.

"Is it something to do with the colour or something?"

Quote:

Originally Posted by hpluvr037

He turned and winked at Ella as Williamson applauded their efforts. Oh good, I wasn't sure we were following that scientific method he was talking about. And as Williamson's gaze shifted upwards, so did Keefer's, almost expecting to see a ball of fur pop out of nowhere. "I think I would like to meet the Puffskein, if he wouldn't mind." Or was it a she? Maybe he should've just said 'it' instead.

"I think I would like him to meet you too," Williamson seemingly echoed Keefer, standing up from his bale of hay and leaving Nerf there with a little pat. "I'll just go fetch him and be right back...."

He started climbing up the stairs built in to the side of the barn wall and was quickly lost from sight in the loft way up above the students' heads. They all kept working, however, and Williamson returned after a brief interlude with a larger version of a yellow puff balanced carefully on his head. Once he reached the floor of the bar, he removed the creature from its perch and passed it over to Keefer.

SPOILER!!: Alyssa

Quote:

Originally Posted by FireboltAvis88

Alyssa raised her hand and shared with the class what she and Taylor were doing. "Professor we decided to work on What the Pygmy Puffs ate? We came up with a list of what we thought the Pygmy Puffs would most likely eat and decided to feed it bits. If they rejected it then, we know that they didn't eat it. If they liked it, then we left it on the list.

Text Cut: List of Food that Pygmy Puffs might eat

1. Cookies
2. Leftover tuna sandwich (check)
3. ants
4. lettuce
5. carrots
6. apples
7. chocolate frogs
8. nose boogers
9. spiders
10. hay
11. rats
12. leaves

We first started feeding my Nerfball bits of some leftover tuna sandwich, which he or she seemed to love eating and he or she is still alive, so I think that they are okay with eating that. We were going to start on the next food to feed it when you called us to report back to you."

Quote:

Originally Posted by FireboltAvis88

Alyssa couldn't help but giggle when she heard that Taylor had tried to feed it hair. "Well thank goodness, it doesn't like hair. I don't fancy sleeping and waking up one day to find out I've lost all my hair. Okay, so we can scratch hair of the list. Let me check what else we can try feeding it."Alyssa told Taylor pulling out the list that they had created.

Text Cut: List of Food that Pygymy Puffs eat

1. Cookies
2. Leftover tuna sandwich (check)
3. ants (check)
4. lettuce (check)
5. carrots
6. apples (check)
7. chocolate frogs (check)
8. nose boogers
9. spiders (check)
10. hay (check)
11. rats
12. leaves (check)
13. pencil
14. shoelaces
15. hair

"Well we have rats, carrots, nose boogers, cookies we can try feeding our Puffs. Or we can add to the list. What else? Paper? Did we try grass? What about worms? Jello? Pudding? Pie? We can add that to the list. I could always run up to the castle and get some more food from the House Elves in the kitchen and run back down here again, while you're feeding whatever you can find. I draw a big no no on live rats, so maybe the Professor has some dead one in the food supply shed for the animals here. But before I forget let me add more stuff to the list." Alyssa told Taylor, quickly adding the suggestions to their growing list.

Text Cut: List of Food that Pygymy Puffs eat

1. Cookies
2. Leftover tuna sandwich (check)
3. ants (check)
4. lettuce (check)
5. carrots
6. apples (check)
7. chocolate frogs (check)
8. nose boogers
9. spiders (check)
10. hay (check)
11. rats
12. leaves (check)
13. pencil
14. shoelaces
15. hair
16. paper
17. grass
18. jello
19. worms
20. pudding
21. pie

"Alright. We're set. I'm going to run up to the castle and grab more food and I'll be back in a jiffy."Alyssa looked for the Professor to ask permission to leave the barnyard to get the food. She didn't want to lose house points for not doing that.

It was then that Williamson remembered Alyssa had been trying to say something to him but he couldn't hear her from up high in the rafters.

"No, Alyssa, I'd like you to wait here, please. You all have made great progress with figuring out the diet of a pygmy puff but I'm going to have to put your research to a halt for now. Please be patient and save your thoughts for your homework because we really need to move on."

Now. Moving on. Williamson smiled around at the students and clapped his hands a few times loudly to get their attention. "Class," he announced, "I know most of you are still busy working, but we really, really," Willy glanced at his wristwatch, "really need to move on now if we're going to have time for all the activities. I want you all to pass in your notes on what you discovered and/or read them aloud to us before you pass them in. We're going to compile a class set of these notes and discoveries and, for homework you will have the opportunity to continue your research."

He nodded and then gestured loosely to the puffskein being passed around. "This is Hogwarts' own puffskein Ronald. As you can see, he is obviously larger, heavier, and fluffier than your own miniature versions of him, the pygmy puffs. He's just a friendly and cuddly, however, so take your time getting to know him.

"Now then, I'd like to continue by having groups share their discoveries. Who here tried to figure out what gender their puff is? Raise your hands and somebody share with me your thought process on this puzzle."

Yeah, Williamson knew this was one of the trickier questions, but it would make sense to get it out of the way sooner rather than later.




ooc: Sorry guys, but I've given you like 7 pages worth of time to work with your partners! lol go ahead and answer the question now and/or compile your notes in one post and RP "passing them in." I'll post again tomorrow afternoon asking a new group to share, then we have some fun activities and games to play! woo! =)

Hmm, how do they figure out what gender a Pygmy Puff is? Vickers angled his head as he looked at the purple creature resting comfortably in the crook of his arm. He picked Hendrix up and turned it around gently in his hands. He named the Puff Hendrix for the practical reason what it looked like it had an afro, not because he knew it was male. He tried to examine the creature a little further to find discernible features if it was male, but he couldnt really tell. He leafed through his textbook-- it didnt say anything about how to determine gender, whether it was for Pygmy Puffs or for Puffskeins. And yet, as history has recorded, pygmy puffs do breed. Tentatively he raised his hand and replied "Professor, perhaps Pygmy Puffs are the type of creatures that are asexual, maybe they dont really have a gender that is recognizably male or female, and thus perhaps their breeding methods are more similar to certain amphibians and plants, where they can self-fertilize or maybe just 'clone' themselves."

Zhenya looked over at Ira and shrugged, holding her hand up.

"Professor, we discussed the issue of training them against eating snot! I thought that a good strategy would be perhaps to make up our own food that looked and felt like snot, but see there could be extra nutrients added to it, and I guess somehow you could find out how to make it taste like snot too. That way, they wouldn't have to eat body produced snot, but they could have this snot replaced formula as a meal," she suggested.

Turning to Ira she whispered, "Did you want to add anything?"

Ira looked on as Zhenya answered for both of them. And she certainly did a good job.. "You explained it just great" Ira whispered to Zhenya smiling, "I can't think of anything that needs to be added.."

Handing in the notes from the summary that she had given earlier on the discussion between her and Vickers, Kurumi returned to her spot in the hay and thought about the question at hand when Vickers spoke up. He took the words right out of her mouth and offered him an encouraging smile. See, he WAS capable of speaking up in class.

After a few more moments, Kurumi raised her hand. "I actually had the same thoughts as Vickers did in regards to pygmy puffs and their genders," she said. "I have read about some species of mammals that use over fifty percent of their metabolism for reproduction and that they are born pregnant and, given the proper conditions, could be capable of producing a litter of ten in twelve hours time." Which, over a period of a few days could cause a MASSIVE amount of fur and trouble. "I thought that perhaps pygmy puffs were duel sexed and not either or."

"I'm not exactly sure," Jezz said picking at some of the hay. Just as she was about to suggest something Professor Williamson spoke.

Jezz shrugged and said raising her hand, "I just gave my Pygmy Puff a gender neutral name, Quibbles. Isn't it possible that it could be like the hermaphrodite snail?" In which case she could not give it a gender based name.

Elise shrugged, nodding slightly. "They were just random pictures that came up when I thought of the word 'Pygmy'." she smiled, moving on. "Right. So Pygmy Puffs are basically unimportant dwarf-like balls of fluff. No offense, Honey," she laughed lightly, patting the Puffer on top of her head.

"I have some baby tomatoes and salad leaves in my bag," she grinned, cocking her head to one side. "We could see if they eat them... And not snot. That's just disgusting."

About them not doing anything, she was just about to respond when Honey yanked her hair. Hard. "Ow!" Elise nodded. "Probably not... Thy're probably just puffskiens, minus magical properties and size...."

In short, they were just... there. And actually did virtually nothing! Scribbling all that down, Elise glanced at the Slytherin for approval and held the notes to her. She might want to hand them in, and maybe add some more...

Picking up the Puffskien that was being passed around, she hugged him close to her. He was just like a teddy bear! Responding to the Professor's question, she smiled. "I don't think they have a gender, professor," she replied, patting the adorable! puffskein. "Maybe they're just... Both?" she finished, passing the puff to the next person.

Shrugging, she wrote some more notes in her doodle-filled notebook. Not like identifying puffskein genders was her specialty or anything...

What was it with people? Why did every single person, always ask her if she was alright, or upset whenever she pouted. If something was wrong she'd frown not pout. Pouting was her thinking face, and what she had been thinking about was just why he's pygmy puff sisn't have a name, not that Lewis knew that unless he was a mind reader..which he probably wasn't.

Trying not to loose her temper she switched her pout into a small smile. "Yes fine, fine..just..um..Whats your pygmy puffs name?" she said quietly because she was just a little shy at times. Anyway..names weren't too important the work was, which was why Ness wouldn't have minded if he didn't have a name for the puff ball.

Notes...Nessie had to write notes. Nessie watched as Lewis took out he's parchment and started writing. She needed to do the same right? "Sometimes he does." She gave Lewis a small nod and then qrote her name, year and house on a clean piece of parchment. Once she was done with that she started writing Puffle's characteristics down, but was stopped when she heard what Lewis had to say.

O__________________O

WHAT? Nessie blinked and then looked up from her parchment to look at the older badger with shocked eyes. Okay yes that may have been true...but wasn't it just a tad awkward of him to say something like that? And one thing for sure, there was NOT a single chance, Nessie would let her little boy would be forced into reproducing..or whatever. "Errrr...yeah..I guess that could work but my Puffle'sisn'tgoinganywhere." she mumbled more to herself than him. It was really awkward, but school work was school work which was why she tried her best to ignore the awkwardness. As for apearance, Ness was surely convinvced that there was no physical differences between the females and males. "They all look the same to me." she gave him another nod.

Now? They had to hand in their notes already? Ness looked at Lewis's notes..he had way more written down than her, all she had on her page was not even one sentence. He would hand in he's then if he was okay with that?

And there was now a puffskein being passed around too, it looked just as cute and as fluffy as a pygmy puff, just a bit bigger of course. Nessie once again got distracted as she looked at the Professor again. Why did he have to be so good looking? She couldn't stop staring, but luckily this time she actually heard the question he had asked the class. Gender? that was exactly what the two had done, well tried to. She slowly raised her hand. "Pro..ff.ess..or well..um..Lewis..and I wetriedthat." She was mumbling again...which was all because thats what happened to her when she was around really good looking boys. "So..er..I..sa..id..that..it'ss..be..cause theyactdifferently?" Going bright red from all her stuttering and mumbling, she moved her gaze off from the professor and looked at Lewis for some sort of help. He could say he's part if he wanted, even if she did think it was wierd it was better than her mumbling answer.

Justin took a look at Minnie and his parchement and thought for a moment..... Then something popped into his head....


Justin quickly jotted down his idea to find out as much about their pygmy puff as they could. then he looked at Minerva and said, " Could you hand me the puff please? I'm gonna see if it's a boy or a girl. And there's only one way we're gonna figure it out, Right?" he said.

Oh... they'd run out of time.

Well they could still listen in on the other thoughts and ideas that were being shared, right? Arya patted the seat beside her Mo, then turned her attention over to the professor and other students. And a puffskein was being passed around! She bounced it in her hands a bit when it circulated over to her and then passed it to her second year partner.

Alyssa was disappointed that they would have to carry on their research later but then again the Professor was right. They would end up spending the entire term here if they didn't move on. So she went back to join Taylor and quickly jotted down notes to what the other students revealed about their findings.

Minerva listened to Justin as he tried to figure out something different to try to see if the pygmy had powers. Then he wrote about the gender. "Do you think that would make a difference?" she eyed him curiously on whether or not that would make a difference.

Minerva listened to the professor and pulled her parchment out so she could turn Justin and her work in. They didn't try to find the gender so she didn't raise her hand. She waited until he asked about the magic powers then she would answer or let Justin answer. She looked back at her parchment to make sure it was ready to turn in.

Parchment:

Ella looked at Keefer with wide eyes and frowned. "Well, I certainly don't want a puffskein for a pet! Imagine if you were sleeping and woke up to a tongue in your nose? Ickkkk!" She was happy she had never encountered a hungry puffskein, even if they were cute.



"Erm-I guess I would too..." Ella said unconvincingly. "I mean as long as it doesn't go for my nose!" she said with a serious expression. No way was that guy or girl going near there! "I wonder what pygmypuffs eat.." Ella added, curiously. "I mean do you think they are scavengers too?"

Ella smiled as the Professor spoke, compiling the notes she had taken during her discussion with Keefer and passing them in to him. Then Ronald was in her arms and she couldn't stop thinking about his tongue going for her nose. Ick! He was cute though, that was for sure. She passed him on with a half smile. She looked around to see who had talked about gender, she was curious about that!