I love my job! After a LONG stint of unemployment, I started a new job last week. No, I'm not squishing flies. In fact, it's the opposite. I'm working in a state park as an interpreter (the interpreter actually, very small staff). Basically, my job is to design, prepare, and present activities, tours, walks, seminars, and other programs for park visitors (and also help with marketing). It contains forest/field/river/wetlands, a fort/battlefield and an archaeological dig site, so in addition to the biology, I have to become knowledgeable on history and anthropology. I work at my own pace, and it's a laid-back atmosphere. This week, I've been familiarizing myself with the park (ie, walking through the woods, riding an ATV) and reading a fascinating book about female soldiers in the Civil War.
Okay, enough personal stuff. Now info for today's strip. It was inspired by a traumatizing genetics lab I had in college. In short, we decapitated sedated fruit flies, squashed the heads, and ran paper chromatography to separate the different pigments. You see, there are two types of biologists. Some are always squashing, drugging, and dismembering flora and fauna. Others are trying to conserve biodiversity and make as little impact as possible on everything. Both sets get a kick out of their jobs. (My new job falls under the latter. State parks preserve things, of course.) I remember the parasitology professor I had whose lab coat was often heavily smeared with the blood of whatever animal he had just cut open to look for worms.
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