Meme Machine: Eight Random Things

(tagged by Sean Prophet)

1. As much as it pains me to admit it, I have a deep-down yearning for sasquatches to be real. I've had some spooky encounters in the wild, albeit no actual sighting or aural experience of anything. Sometimes I head over to the Bigfoot Field Researchers' Organization website and browse through their sighting reports- to what purpose, I don't know. Maybe the discovery of such a creature serves as some kind of weird fantasy.


2. Part of my fascination with the concept of sasquatch may come from my experiments with ultra-primitive camping. And when I say ultra-primitive, I mean sans nearly everything but a loincloth and a knife. And a lot of mud. In fact, it's entirely possible that I'm responsible for several sasquatch "sightings" in and around Daniel Boone and Wayne National Forest.


3. I had in my possession at one point in time a ball python and a mouse colony. I learned very quickly that the mice could out-reproduce the gastronomical needs of the snake very easily.


4. I've also rehabilitated a baby raccoon I found while hiking near my apartment, and initially thought was dead. When he woke up and started running in a circle and bleating for its mother, I took pity on the little thing and brought him home and named him Garrett. He was unsure what he thought about me for a little while, until I got him to try some kitten formula- at that point, I was his favorite person in the world. I kept him for a few months, until he was big enough to take care of itself. Before I released him, I took him camping and taught him how to catch and eat crayfish. It was not easy to let him go free.


5. It's probably obvious by now that I love animals. Early on, I wanted to be a veterinarian, and in fact my designation throughout my undergraduate study was "pre-vet." However, while going to college I volunteered at several veterinarian offices and got to know the profession better. I discovered that although I loved working with animals, I loathed working with peoples' pets. Large animals weren't much better - the average horse owner is even more annoying than the average dog or cat owner.


6. My choice of science as a career was somewhat accidental - having turned away from veterinary medicine as an option, I thought that I might be happy as a wildlife biologist, but I was also working as a tech in a molecular biology laboratory on campus. When I neared graduation, my boss strongly suggested that I apply to the graduate program, which I hadn't seriously considered (even though I was a reasonably adept lab tech and loved the science I was working in).


7. As a graduate student, my most valuable skill became performing vascular surgery on the carotid arteries of mice. You can read all about it on PubMed.


8. Although I'm more than open to just about any kind of cuisine available (particularly Indian and Thai), I cannot stomach any kind of melon. Not watermelon, cantaloupe, honeydew, or anything from that family. And I've tried- this was a distaste that was immediately obvious to me at a young age, at my first attempt of any of these fruits- but since then, I'll periodically try them again, to see if I've gotten over my revulsion. The only thing that's improved is my ability to swallow the fruit without dry-heaving - when I was younger, it was that bad. I have no discernible allergy to the stuff - I could rub it all over myself or eat a whole slice of watermelon with no ill effects other than highly acute nausea. It's my kryptonite.