While it’s often most enjoyable to be outside, sometimes the incessant sunshine and flower fragrances are just overwhelming, and you turn for refuge from the beautiful world.

Seeking nothing but the finest grit and grime led me to one of my favorite places on campus: the basement of the Poole Agricultural Center.

Poole, built in 1955, is extremely evocative of that decade’s preferred architectural style: the concrete box tomb.

A semi-hidden set of staircases leads you to a landing with a couple of surplus chairs and a vending machine.

Taking a right turn leads to such sites as the mailroom and TV studio, but the real fun comes after taking a left.

As the constant hum and banging of the building’s massive HVAC system slowly grow louder, you descend into a world of plywood and chicken wire cage walls, with the musty scent of chlorine and old paint hanging in the air, slowly deteriorating your brain function.

As you wind your way further and further into the bowels of the building, 50-year-old department surplus splays out in front of you, with chairs older than your parents pulled up to lab tables your grandparents could have been conceived upon.

Doors bang and squeak in the distance, seeming to suggest the presence of others, but none ever appear as you wander the stacks of old fish tanks and bundles of logs.

Strange figures from what seem to be ‘90s ad campaigns imploring you to “EAT LOCAL” creep out from behind tailgate supplies, next to suitcases and computers like the ones your older siblings got secondhand, many years used.

Although it is a strange and deeply discomforting place, it makes a great place to get work done because you want nothing more than to GET OUT NOW! LET ME OUT!

SAVE ME FROM THIS PLACE! I SWEAR I’LL GET THE ARTICLE DONE JUST LET ME OUT! THEY’RE COMING! PLEASE…

This article is satire as part of The Tiger’s April Fool’s edition, The Kitten. This story was written for comedic purposes and has no verifiable truth to it.