Excitement in the Biology Lab

         I just transferred into this school this semester as a second bachelors student.  Since I am going for a degree completely different from the one I already have, there are some basics I need to take to prepare me for the higher level courses I'll be taking.  Because of that, as a "senior" I am in a freshman biology class.  If you took the higher level biology class offered in your high school, that's pretty much what this class is, except in lab we don't dissect crayfish and watch single celled organisms move around in pond water.  We squish strawberries to extract and look at strings of their DNA.  We count the number of cells in an onion root tip that are in each stage of mitosis.  We measure the rate of photosynthesis in a leaf using syringes, and driving our TAs nuts because even they hate that lab.

A monarch butterfly caterpillar.  We let milkweed grow in our yard to attract them.

          In between lab weeks, we have a lab exercise week where we do a worksheet instead.  The last week we were in lab, two weeks ago, was a lab exercise day.  We all turned in our written lab reports, sat down, and prepared for a short lab lecture that we hoped would help us complete the assignment.

          That's when the guy in front of me looks down at the floor behind him and nudges the girl next to him, signalling toward the floor.  I decide to take a break from my daily sudoku to watch whatever was about to unfold.  The girl looks back and jumps in her seat.  She starts squirming and making noises like some horrible monster is about to get her.  Ok, this is definitely better than sudoku.

          The girl next to me, and my whole row and half the class notices that something is up, and she stands up to lean over the lab bench and see what's causing all the commotion.  I expect her to look and chuckle at whatever it was because she looks like a tough girl who wouldn't squeal at unknown floor monsters.  I am wrong.  She jumps back into her chair and starts scooting away from the bench as though whatever it may be is coming our way.  The girl next to her just about copies her exactly.

          Alright, I have to remind you here that I used to play with grasshoppers when I was little.  I also used to let daddy-long-leg spiders and spindly spiders crawl on my hands and arms.  There were very few bugs I would avoid playing with, and those were usually ones known to bite or sting.  Judging from the reactions of everyone who looked at this floor monster whatever was on the floor was probably big, hairy, and had more legs than any living thing should.  Why did I come to this conclusion?  What are the two things that freak the most people out that is small enough and likely to show up on a classroom floor?  A snake would be one, but that is less likely as a snake probably couldn't go unnoticed loose in a building very long.  A spider is the other.  It is fall now, and spiders are coming indoors, but not the hairless ones.  Those don't commonly come indoors and hunt across the floor.  The hairy ones are the hunters I usually find stalking my bedroom floor.

          So, everyone within seeing range of this monster is backing away from it, and I figured the wisest thing to do would be to follow suit, so I pushed my chair back a foot or two, just to be safe.  All this action does not go unnoticed by our TA.  She bravely comes to the row to see what the racket is about, looks, chuckles, reaches down and picks it up with her bare hands!  Several students are shocked.  I am not.  I was fooled by the crowd into believing there was some danger on the floor when it was only a cricket.

          A cricket!  Probably a small brown one, too. The TA informs us there's a cricket lab in the building and they often get loose, so she kindly spares it by letting it go outside while the class regains composure.  I feel silly.  Captain Z does not shy away from crickets.  I am the girl who used to go cricket hunting on a regular basis!

Milkweed longhorn beetles are also attracted to this plant.  They squeak when you hold them too tight.

          We have these large, blue garbage bins that we used to hold sports equipment and toys in the garage, and they were also used in the garden.  The bottom of these garbage cans have concentric circles that bump out and create wonderful little hiding tunnels for all sorts of bugs.  We would always hear the crickets chirping from the garage at night and it was our hobby to go out and catch as many of those big, black suckers as we could!  We'd put them in jars and look at them.  When we had ducks, they would get a nice snack the next morning, otherwise we'd let them go.  Grasshoppers eat grass, but what do crickets eat?  So we didn't often try raising them; it felt cruel to starve them slowly in a plastic jar.

We always let butterflies go, too.  The good kinds, at least, like this painted lady.
The bad ones are fun to feed to a praying mantis.

          Out in the garden was even better!  The soil stayed moist well into the morning under the protection of the garbage cans so bugs loved to live under there and stay right near the surface of the ground.  One of my siblings would quickly pull the garbage can away while the others crouched, ready to catch anything cool that tried to escape, or grab the earthworms and night crawlers before they could retreat down their tunnels.  Oh yeah, we all loved playing with bugs, even the slimy or stinky ones.  Did I tell you that I tried eating a stink bug when I was just a baby?  I guess I've just always been curious about them ;)  Don't worry, the stink bug was rescued from my mouth by my fast-acting mom.

          Now I already said that I didn't play with the stinging sorts of bugs.  I had a deep respect for the pain everyone said they could bring, so I didn't want to find out if all the stories were true.  My brothers, on the other hand, had no such respect.  Sometimes when we tried to catch butterflies on flowers, we'd accidentally snag a bee instead.  My brothers decided to make a game of it.  They put the bee in a jar, set the lid on top so the bee couldn't escape but without sealing it so it was easy to knock off.  Then they placed the jar in the clubhouse and backed up so that they were halfway between the bee and the garage door.  I was usually watching from the garage door.  I didn't want any part of their mean shenanigans, but if someone was going to get stung I didn't want to miss that.  It would be well deserved.

Don't worry, we never messed with honey bees.  None of them have ever stung us.

          Can you guess what is coming next?  They start taking turns throwing things at the jar.  They continue this until someone manages to knock the jar over and release the probably very angry buzzer.  My brothers come flying toward me and we shut the garage door as my brothers pant.  We share a look of triumph.  Haha, that evil bee was not fast enough to beat us into the garage.  Again!  So far no bee or wasp has managed to sting us before we got to safety.

          Are you laughing?  I am.  We actually thought the bees and wasps that we did this to were smart enough and angry enough to hunt us down and sting us before we reached safety.  Those poor bugs were probably just trying to get out of the jar and get as far away from our yard as possible!  Those rare occasions where my brothers actually managed to knock the jar over in a way that the bug couldn't get out were the scariest.  Then someone had to approach to jar, as though it was a bomb that could go off at any moment and release our doom, and put the jar back up on the clubhouse floor so they could try again.  You see, once you've got a stinging, mad bug in a jar, releasing it within 10 yards of yourself sounds like suicide.  We weren't crazy, we knew that once we caught the bug, knocking the jar over with a rock was the only way to let it loose without it killing us!

I wish I was that flexible!

          So the lesson here is: if you ever catch kids throwing rocks at a jar with a dangerous bug inside.  Instead of getting mad at them, be the brave hero and go let the bug out yourself and show them that it's not as dangerous as it seems.  Of course I wouldn't advise that with a wasp.  That'd be just plain crazy.  Grab a baseball or a very, very long stick to let that one go. ;)