Peering out from nearly every nook in the room is a flock of faux flamingoes—some stuffed, some made of metal, some wood, plastic, and glass. A life-sized papier-mache flamingo stands, one-legged, beside Cutter’s desk. Cutter, a geography professor who studies natural and environmental disaster, was bit—hard, apparently—by the flamingo bug more than 20 years ago.

“I was in graduate school at the University of Chicago and would stop at all these tacky shops on the way home to California,” Cutter said. “I just loved those places and picked up all kinds of little mementoes. I think that got me in the flamingo mode, because when we bought our first house in 1983, I put a pair of plastic pink flamingoes in the backyard to celebrate.”

The pair soon multiplied into a flock that migrated around the yard every time Cutter and her husband, Langdon Warner, cut the grass. The two-dozen flamingo flock (along with their two children, a dog, and a cat) came with them in the move several years ago from New Jersey (Rutgers University) to South Carolina.

When friends and students noticed the neon pink flock of fowl, they started adding variations to Cutter’s collection. Those additions include a silk flamingo, flamingo clock, light switch, pencils, earrings, coasters, kites, mobiles, plunger (yes, a flamingo-emblazoned plunger), Christmas stocking, glasses case, front license plate on her car, and a lawn sprinkler that shoots water from the flamingo’s beak.

Then there is the flamingo crossing sign, flamingo books, shirts, and tie.

“My husband feeds the fetish, and I bought him a flamingo tie. He wears it sometimes to Dutch Fork High School where he teaches,” Cutter said.

When visiting for the first time, graduate students walk into Cutter’s office, see the whimsical flamingoes, “and just smile,” she said. “It disarms them, and they realize I’m not a stuffy academic.”

Each of her graduate students receives a beanie baby flamingo named Pinky (she buys them in bulk) upon graduation and become members of the Pinky Club. Some graduates send pictures of their respective Pinky’s perched atop computers at their post-graduate school jobs.

Cutter even incorporated plastic pink flamingoes into a commencement address she made last December at the doctoral hooding ceremony. Using the first letters—PPF—of her three-word passion, Cutter exhorted the new Ph.Ds. to persist and have passion and fun in their new careers.

What’s next for Cutter’s burgeoning flamingo collection?

“Every year I’m tempted to do a Christmas tree with flamingo lights and ornaments but never quite have time to do it,” she said. “Maybe this will be the year.”

07/03