Dodo Methods

It had been a long and disturbing summer. As the students returned to school it seemed that everything had changed. While each family went on their own adventures far and near, a foreboding stillness had engulfed the land. A string of disasters unfolded throughout the summer, each one more devastating than the last. There was a rash of evil babies falling from the sky, the last living unicorn was murdered, and finally the devastating war and retreat brought on by a lost flock of mutant dodo birds. It was debatable whether the school year would even happen, as the remaining human population was forced underground for fear of the predation by the mutant dodo army. Humanity had to dig a system of tunnels to avoid predation, making the journey back to school difficult.

As each student tunneled back to school they arrived at what might best be described as a fortified compound. Jaime had reinforced the walls with steel siding where the windows had once been. There was no natural light, but the school’s electricity was still flowing through back-up generators. There was a somber mood among the student body, as many students were mourning the loss of pets and family members to the ravenous mutant dodo birds. Students tunneled to and from school each day, shared food, and kept on learning.

Despite Jaime having stockpiled a large quantity of diesel fuel for the generators, it was only a matter of time before Mack ran out of power, and the school would be engulfed in darkness. Once all of the students arrived back on campus, a school-wide morning meeting was arranged to address the problem. Headmaster Jumbledore was blunt, describing the dire situation in plain terms. “Without a solution to the Dodo problem, we will all be stuck living out our lives hiding and lurking underground. I challenge you all to put your design-thinking and experimental skills to work on creating a solution.”

The students brainstormed dozens of ideas to eradicate the Dodo birds. Students suggested poison, mind control, force fields, and traps. Students morphed and changed their ideas as they observed the giant nesting Dodo birds out on our campus fields. The dodos slept at night, nested on the ground, and had developed the ability to fly short distances in order to catch their victims. The students built a system of tunnels underneath the fields so that they could test some of their ideas on the nesting birds. As they built their tunnels, they periodically dug up to the surface, installing lockable hatches.

Students tested many poison infused foods on the surface, but the Dodos learned quickly to avoid them. One student thought he had mastered bird mind control, but quickly wound up in a Dodo digestive system while conducting his final experiments. A group of 8th graders developed Dodo traps, but the birds showed no interest in the contraptions. Everything changed when one intrepid 5th grader developed a form of bird-flu virus, in which the viral DNA was designed to insert itself into the genome of the Dodos. Nestled inside the viral DNA was a gene capable of transporting the neurotransmitter Serotonin to the brain. The production of serotonin is connected to feelings of happiness. The student hypothesized that if the virus inserted itself into the Dodo DNA, then it would constantly increase their serotonin, and as a result the Dodos would become docile and harmless.

After 3 years, the student’s “community project” was ready to be tested. With the help of her classmates, she crawled through the campus tunnels, crawled up a hatch and left a heaping pile of beef sprayed with the live virus. Her classmates watched from a distance with binoculars, confirming by walky-talky when a Dodo had eaten the bait. After a Dodo bird ate the bait, she would wait 15 minutes before having one of her friends pop-up from a hatch near the Dodo. She would then record the amount of time it took before the Dodo took flight trying to attack the student. The student would hop down into the tunnels before the Dodo had a change to gobble the student. She repeated this procedure every 15 minutes for 2 hours.

In order for the experiment to accurately test the hypothesis, she repeated it multiple times under the exact same conditions. The bait was always the same, containing the same amount of beef and virus. It was always presented at 2:00pm, and the students being used as bait were always the same, and used the same hatches. Additionally, after every virus experiment an identical trial was conducted with just beef, no virus. This was done so that the results could be compared and that the final results could be attributed to the virus alone. The data collected is presented below.

The results of just 4 experimental trials were dramatic. Following the experiment, the whole student body started mass-producing the bird flu virus and presenting it to the birds. Within two months all of the campus Dodos were docile, so that students could pet and even ride these giant birds. Of course the off-campus population was still ravenous. It took the work of a group of tunnel-digging 3rd graders to spread the message across Boulder, and eventually the entire state, country and eventually the world. It would take nearly a decade, but the fear of ravenous Dodos would eventually come to an end.

In order to solve this puzzle you will need to use your knowledge of the scientific method

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