What?

Today I walked to the post office to mail a letter. I walked through the University of Minnesota campus to get there. Since classes are online the campus is a good place to walk and keep appropriate social distance. I walked by this statue and could not, for the life of me, figure out what it was. Was it  a slug worming through a magnifying glass? Was it a fantastical giraffe? Was it a bird carrying an extra long stick through a circle? Maybe a skinny flying dragon coming out of a tunnel? This is a big statue of almost 90 feet in height. Maybe it is a virus or bacteria coming out of a petri dish tilted on it's side. The circle shape sure looked like a magnifying glass to me and I was close to the science building. Curiosity got the better of me. According to the college newsletter, the sculpture was erected in 2006. The title is "Wild Ricing Moon." The artist is John David Mooney. He chose these images to represent the natural features of this region. This is just me but don't you think a stalk of wild rice would reach all the way down to the ground?