a current meme

[solarbird]

Leave a word, any word, in the comments below, and I will tell you a fact about myself relating to that word.

Comments

[sistawendy]

caterpillar

[solarbird]

When I was in grad school I worked for a while in a genetics laboratory headed by Grace Jones and Davy Jones, and I am making up neither of those names. They wanted me to run their computers and I did, but that was too easy so I started doing more things which is how I ended up on three papers (lead author on one!) which is why I can say I kind of used to be a geneticist. I mean, I'm published, so.

Anyway, they did a lot of work on insects - it was specifically an entomology genetics lab - and aside from the inevitable fruit flies (of course) they did a lot of work with parasitic wasps, which incubated their eggs in (ta da!) little moth caterpillars.

Normally, of course, all of the caterpillars get stung, but once, somehow, a couple of them got missed! And we had two cocoons. So I built a little habitat next to my desk for the (very short-lived) adults and had two moth pets named Bert and Ernie for about two and a half weeks before they died.