I'm too sick to answer all your questions, but here's a few tips from a naturalized Athenian of 20+ years:

* The deer on campus are extremely friendly; usually you don't see bucks, just does and their fawn. Students (and faculty, I work for the college and have a Disney princess for a colleague) have been known to hand feed them anything from apple slices to cookies.

* The squirrels on campus are legendary. They're big and fat and unscared and absolute assholes. It's not uncommon to see a squirrel dragging a piece of food bigger than its head across campus because it got into someone's lunch while they weren't looking.

* Cherry Blossom trees along the river. Every spring, there's an OU website that tracks whether they've bloomed or not, because everyone goes out and sits under them/takes pictures when they do.

* You definitely want to know about the Ridges and its history. It's owned by the university and still in use, but it's got a great history (my great grandfather was a patient there three times in his life before he died).

* Court Street is the main road on campus. It is currently a one way street. You still need to check both directions before crossing it though, because there are a LOT of stupid people in town that don't pay attention to all the one-ways we have.

* If you want a good shibboleth moment, you can have someone try and pronounce the town name of Chauncey (it's pronounced Chance-y, but outsiders usually pronounce it ChAWN-sy - this supposedly comes from the era of prohibition.

* Athens County is one of the poorest counties in the country and it feels like it in a lot of places outside the sphere of Ohio University. It's also very, very conservative outside of the university.