September 2004 Archives

The other day my entomology class went out to Jennings Creek to get some aquatic bugs. When I slipped my foot into one of the boots above the bottom felt really weird. I pulled my foot back out and looked inside, and I saw two shoelaces sticking out. Immediately I thought "Someone tried to stick their shoe into this boot and got it stuck!" So without even thinking about what I was about to say, I exclaimed "Someone's shoe is in this boot!" My professor seemed very surprised, so he took the boot and rolled it down and was most likely thinking, "You dumb girl, there is no shoe in this boot, those laces are supposed to be there." But instead he politely showed me that there was no such shoe stuck in my boot and that the laces were there for who knows what, I don't remember because I was too busy feeling like an idiot at the time.

This is my new cat. Jessica called me last Friday to tell me that she found Sushi. Remember, Sushi and Achilles ran away almost two months ago. I was really excited about this. I waited all day long, and then after work I went over to Jessica's to pick her up. I walked into Jessica's room and...it wasn't Sushi! Ha. It was sad in a way since I was expecting to bring Sushi home, but it was also really funny because the cat sitting there was MamaCat! MamaCat is a stray cat who has been living in my dad's backyard for a couple years. Kory and I call her MamaCat because she had four kittens last summer. This is when we discovered her, and while I still lived at home I would give her food and water. After I moved out, I think the neighbors started feeding her. It really was very funny to see MamaCat sitting there in a cat bed at Jessica's apartment when I'm used to seeing her laying in my dad's driveway. I didn't really know what to do at this point. I always wished I could have taken MamaCat in, but I couldn't since we already had Achilles and Sushi. I felt really bad though, I couldn't make her go and live outside again. But what if someone does find Achilles and Sushi? I don't know. Jessica had even treated MamaCat for fleas and she got vaccinations and had a feline leukemia test. She was good to go! So I finally decided to take her home with me. She's been here over a week now and she seems really happy! Every time you come home she comes up to you and just drops onto the floor so you can pet her belly. It doesn't seem like she wants to go outside at all, she actually seems quite scared of it. She's very cautious whenever a door or window is opened, and she's still a little skittish whenever there's a loud sound. She's getting much better though. When I first brought her home, anytime you would walk down the stairs she would run and hide behind the couch, but now she doesn't even care. I was worried that she wasn't going to use a litterbox after being outside for who knows how long, but she did right away! I was also concerned since Kory is allergic to cats, but it hasn't been a problem yet. So far everything is working out ok!
She doesn't really have a name yet. I don't want to call her MamaCat. Kory calls her FauxPaw because one of her legs is all tan (you can see her tan foot in the picture.) I've just been calling her kitty. I'm all out of names now, so if anyone has a suggestion feel free to let me know.

I have a lot of things I could write about, but I just feel too tired. So here is a list of what happened last week. Maybe I will elaborate when I'm feeling up to it.

• Sunday - The exhaust on my car broke.
• Monday - Nothing really happened on this day. I pretty much just drove 120 miles with a really loud car. Oh, this is the day when the ants attacked my bug box. And also, this was my anniversary.
• Tuesday - Ahh, the glorious day when I dropped Calculus ll.
• Wednesday - My car got fixed.
• Thursday - I saw Henry Rollins.
• Friday - I rescued a cat and saw Garden State. Oooh, and I had really good pizza.
• Saturday - The usual, cleaning and studying.

Tomorrow is my brother Shaun's birthday. Happy birthday, Shaun.

I had mentioned something before about working in groups in cell biology, and of course about how I didn't like it. That was the first day of class. On the second day of class, Dr.K assigned us PERMANENT groups. Permanent meaning 4 other people I don't know who I am forced to sit and work with everyday for the rest of the semester. And as if that isn't bad enough, Dr.K decided to videotape every group and made a slideshow from the video stills. At the beginning of every class, he has the slideshow projected on a huge screen for the whole class to see. Our group (we are called the Cytoplasmic Streamers thanks to me) photo is hilarious because the other four people in my group are all huddled together and smiling, and there I am with half a smile, way off to the side by myself. So I'm forced to look at this dumb photo 3 days a week, and everytime I think, "Hey, I'm wearing that same exact hoodie today."

Let me tell you a little about my bug box. It's probably the worst bug box in the class. The bottom is all cracked and gives me splinters, the inside side pieces fall out if you turn it over, the top part of the lid is popped off, the hook closures don't close all the way, etc etc. By the time that I started using it and noticed all these defects, all the other bug boxes were already signed out, so I couldn't swap. So I'm stuck with this bug box that I can't stand. On Tuesday we were supposed to bring in our bug boxes and any bugs we hadn't pinned yet. So on Monday, I opened up my box to check on all the dead inhabitants, and surprise! There were live bugs in my bug box, and they were eating my dead bugs! Ants had invaded my box. Luckily they only ate the body of a damselfly, but hey, they were nice enough to leave me the wings! I took all my dead bugs out and was going to dump the ants out, but before I had a chance to do so the ants just crawled through the cracks of the box and underneath the foam. For all I know, those ants are building a home in the bottom of my box and making plans to sabotage my collection. PESTS I tell you, PESTS.

Even worse, the mantis I found at Carol's required some elaborate pinning on a spreading board, so now I have this awesome huge bug that I will probably never find again, and that took me a half an hour to pin, wide open for any bug in the world to come and eat up. I'm not sure how long it's going to take him to dry, probably at least a week. He had the soggiest smooshiest abdomen I've ever seen, which is one reason he needed so much pinning. So for now, the bug box is on my kitchen counter, and my mantis is hidden away in my closet.

Calculus is killing me. I have never been so confused and frustrated in my life. I even resorted to buying a book called "Calculus Made Easy" and guess what? It still isn't easy! The book goes over a bunch of basic things we did in Calculus l, but it only covers one thing that we've done in Calculus ll. The other night I finished my first whole problem of the semester! A WHOLE PROBLEM! I was so excited. It just so happens that the one problem I finished is that "one thing" from Calculus ll that the book covers. This is no coincidence, this is me being dumb.

Really, this class ruins EVERY DAY for me because I have the class EVERY DAY. I'm really considering dropping it. Some credit hour calculations that I made tonight make me want to drop it even more. You see, instead of taking Calculus ll I can take some statistics class, which everyone says is really hard, but hey, why not try it? So I figured out how many credit hours I have left to take for my degree, and I need 30 hours in my major, and two foreign language classes. This comes to 36 credit hours. If I drop Calculus ll, which is 5 hours, and add Statistics, which is three hours, this brings my total to 39. 39 credit hours could be accomplished in three more semesters. And I know you're thinking that I could stay in Calculus ll and take a full 18 credit hours, and get it done in 2 semesters. But I will remind you that I am behind in chemistry labs, so I will theoretically have one organic chemistry lab per semester (if I finish in two semesters.) I highly doubt this is going to work though, considering that each lab is two days a week for three hours. I don't think there is any way I could get all 18 credit hours to fit without overlapping time problems, especially when the other classes I need have only one or two sections. Also, 5 out of the 6 biology classes I still need have labs! That would make 7 labs total, which if split into two semesters means 3 in one and 4 in the other! Impossible! So this is why I will need to finish in three semesters, which will allow me to drop Calculus ll if need be.

I know I talk about school all the time now, but it's the only thing I do!

Ok, now I am going to talk about bugs. I love them! Catching bugs has become much easier in the past week, and it's so much fun! I went over to Carol's this weekend to catch bugs by her development and it was quite productive. Among my catches were three dragonflies and a 3-4 inch mantis! Those dragonflies are hard to catch. I also scooped some mosquito larvae out of Carol's birdbath, and today I looked in the vial and I now have two adult mosquitoes! My dad also caught a huge bumblebee for me (which was still twitching his legs three hours after being in the killing jar. I now put all my bugs into the freezer, because let me tell you, it's really scary to all of a sudden hear a two inch grasshopper (who you thought was dead) jumping around in a tiny jar! Clink, clank, clink! Not to mention horror stories I've heard about moths and butterflies coming back to life while on a pinning board!) Later on, Kory and I went up to the school to catch some bugs, and it was hilarious. Kory was all about catching the dragonflies, so he was just running around the field chasing them with the net. He claims to have caught one and accidentally let it go, but I just don't know. I think they're very hard to catch while flying. The ones I have were caught while they were just perching. They are vicious little creatures too! I swear the one tried to bite me. I have this image permanently stuck in my head of the last one I caught, his huge green head staring at me, his mandibles chomping together sideways, trying to eat me. Imagine this, but pretty, green, and chomping. Scary!

Hey! Today is my and Kory's four year anniversary!

What a waste of a day. This has been my first true day off from school and work in a while, and I did nothing but bum around the apartment until 4:00. Really, I didn't leave my apartment until 4:00pm! I have a whole semester of calculus to review and I just sat around and took naps. I know it's not really a big deal, but I just feel so bad after I've wasted a day like this.

Part of the reason I was so tired and out of energy is because I was out catching bugs last night! I went into work with Kory and ran around trying to find bugs. It's turning out to be a lot harder than I thought. It took a few soggy ruined bugs to figure out how much ethyl acetate I needed in the jar, and I'm still not very happy with how I'm doing it now. It takes about 20 minutes to a half an hour for them to stop twitching around, and this is such a pain. Am I supposed to put multiple bugs in one killing jar? I didn't last night because it just seems like it would be a mess, so I would catch one, wait until it was dead, catch another, etc. And moths, ugh. I don't understand how people can catch and pin moths because you can't touch them at all! Any little touch with anything rubs all the scales off their wings. I am not looking forward to collecting them.

This morning I tried to pin the few that I caught, and had no luck. They're either too small to pin or too hard to pin (even though they were in the killing jar all night) or the legs fall off or their antennae are broken. It's really frustrating, especially when you wait a half an hour to kill one and you go to straighten out a leg a bit and it just falls off. Entomology may sound easy, but it's not!

Not to mention how horrible I feel killing them. I wish it would just kill them faster. There was one poor grasshopper in my jar, who I thought was dead already. I made the mistake of putting a moth in with him and it was so sad. The moth was flying around like crazy, running into the grasshopper, who apparently wasn't dead yet. The grasshopper would get turned onto it's back and would twitch it's legs around, but it was no use, he couldn't get up. It was really sad. And then I made the mistake of taking them out of the jar too early. I had set them into a plastic container so I could go catch more, and 15 minutes later they were in the container twitching around like crazy, trying to turn themselves upright. This was terrible because I had to pick the poor things up and put them back into the killing jar (only after I waited 10 minutes for the huge monster bug who was currently in the jar to start dying.)

Well, tomorrow our class is going on a field trip to Jennings Creek where we are supposedly going to learn all the do's and don'ts of collecting bugs. Hopefully I'll learn some things that will make this easier.

On a better note, Kory and I finally bought a scanner/printer today. It's about time, I haven't had one since I moved out of my dad's house. Something is wrong with my old printer, it won't print yellow. We've tried two new cartridges, and just can't get it to work. So it's really nice to have a good printer. I also developed my first two rolls of REAL FILM for the first time in almost a year. Real film! It was quite a surprise to see some of the pictures on them. A few of them were quite old, there's even a picture of Dennis!

Entomology This could possibly be the best class ever. It's taught by this man, who just so happens to be a bug genius. It's a small class, and all of the students in it are either seniors or grad students, which is really nice. 20% of our grade is based upon our INSECT COLLECTION! Yes, our insect collection. Throughout the semester we have to catch our own insects, kill them, and pin them. What could be better than a class where you get to go catch bugs? We were all given a big old bug net, a killing jar, this block of wood to spread our butterflies and moths on, an aspirator, and a bug box to pin them in. !!! I really am so excited for this class, now if I only had time to actually go catch bugs.

A killing jar? Yes, a killing jar. Pretty much a jar with plaster of paris and ethyl acetate in the bottom. Right after class on Tuesday, Kory and I found this awesome bug crawling on my windshield, so we pulled over and stuck him in the jar. And we waited, and waited, and waited, and the bug just was not dying! Two days passed, and by my next class he still was not dead. My killing jar was not working! Once I got to class, some of the other girls were in the hallway catching flies with their hands, and they said their killing jars weren't killing either. I was scared to catch more bugs because I figured they would just eat each other up being in the jar all together. But these girls obviously didn't care. They had beetles, moths, flies, and some other bugs all running around in their jars. We talked to my professor, and were informed that the jars didn't have any ethyl acetate in them yet, and that we had to go out and buy some. WELL, that isn't what our TA had told us, but it was pretty funny anyway.

So I had this poor bug in my jar, and I had no clue what he was when I caught him. I looked him up online and found a picture of him, and he is only the larva of a ladybird beetle (ladybug.) I was hoping he would be some exotic insect that no one had discovered yet, but no, he's one of the best known bugs ever. After I found out that my killing jar wasn't working yet, I decided to let him go, but he wouldn't leave! He was stuck on the side of the jar and was not letting go! I just stuck the jar back in my bag, and when I pulled it out the next day there was a surprise. My ladybird larva was now a PUPA! He was becoming an adult beetle in my KILLING JAR! That's the exact opposite of what he was supposed to be doing! So when he emerges, I'm just going to let him go because I feel bad for the little guy.

Oh yes, and the scary aspirator. Pretty much a vial with two tubes coming out of it. You put one tube by the bug, and you use the other tube to suck the bugs into the jar (with your mouth!!) My TA promised that there is no way you can suck the bugs into your mouth, but I just don't know if I can trust her anymore since she lied about our killing jars! And notice on that link that it says, "An in-line air filter which prevents virtually all particles from reaching your mouth." Yeah, except for those hair-thin insect legs!

Since I linked to my entomology teacher's page, I want to link to my cell bio teacher's page, and my organic chemistry teacher's page, because they are geniuses as well. I can't link to my crazy calculus teacher's page, because he doesn't have one! Imagine that.