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"Not a velociraptor, I'm no John Hammond," he replied, a bit cheekily. "Mantis shrimp. Think a lot more legs and a lot more colors." Whether or not he'd be entirely opposed to owning a velociraptor, though, remained a bit of a mystery. Or not. He had shamelessly listed his favorite movie as Jurassic Park when he'd exchanged introductions with the class.

"Ah," he then responded, "that's the kicker there, ain't it." He brought his free hand up to briefly scratch at the side of his face before letting it settle back down on the desk. "Guess there's only so much you can do in that case, huh. So, let's just talk about your schoolwork, how do you think you've been doing there?"

"Sure can," replied Dr. Westerman, and he had a sort of smug, prideful look about him -- as if he were talking about the feats and accomplishments of a close relative instead of random fun facts about an obscure animal species. "They can break out a glass aquarium; Ex can make a huge mess out of an oyster, I bet you can imagine."

Ah, but he did love talking about his pets and interests when someone was around who shared them. That was a bit of a strange thing, even in the classroom at first, hearing him list out terminology and explanations for complicated processes, interspersed with his easygoing cityslicker slang. It was remarkably easy to forget that he was a certified expert on anything but mellowness.

Unfortunately, though, this wasn't a classroom lecture, and Calintha wasn't there to learn extra credit material. The break away from eye contact was -- well, understandable, given she was telling a teacher that she was losing interest in school. Perry almost had the notion that there was something else on the girl's mind, but he shrugged it off. Probably just weighed down from the stresses of living alone: and with how <******** weird this city had revealed itself to be, that wasn't something to brush off.

"Well, I can give you the Saturday morning special routine about how you're too smart to give up on school so early, but what's that gonna do," he shrugged. "I heard the deals you can get up at Shlip are pretty cozy too, you know, they don't got nothing like that back where I'm from. But, yeah, that's enough guilt tripping for one episode, wouldn't you say, kiddo?" He quirked the corner of his mouth in a humorous smirk, then took a moment to polish off the rest of his doughnut. "How about this, you can still get by with at least a B in this class if you get in all the work you missed and just hold the fort for a couple more weeks."

"It's fine, kiddo, this stuff happens, what can you do," said her teacher, shrugging and leaning back in his swivel chair and allowing the momentum to turn him until he could prop his feet up on the corner of his desk. "It might make some teachers cry on the inside a bit, but at the end of the day what goes on with your education is up to you. Just get all your stuff together and maybe I'll shove a recommendation letter at you anyway. You never know."