Minus the cigarettes in this image, this is how I've felt the past several days. Yesterday I spent over twelve hours working on a final project submission for an online class, and this morning I woke up excessively early (after little sleep) to prepare for a quiz. Our teacher has offered some extra credit for the first exam, so I want to work on that before staggering into work looking like a crack coffee fiend. I've fallen hours and hours behind at my job, so it looks like a good portion of my vacation will be spent trying to make-up for lost time.
Oh, did I say vacation? Why, yes. That is correct. This Friday night EJ and I are leaving for Connecticut to visit my brother and his lovely wife. I'm crossing my fingers for a punk show, a space metal show, hiking, being a beach bum, looking for snakes, going on more insect-massacre sprees, and wandering about New York. Also, let's not forget one of the most important facets: gratuitous amounts of photos.
Looks like my time is up. Back to the coffee pot! (It's the student equivalent of the Bat Mobile.)
Sometimes, when I can't sleep and all coherent thought has long past, I try to make the most ridiculous face I can muster:
It's about then that the demons of sleep acknowledge that they have a potential problem on their hands and release me into dream-land. Sometimes while I'm still conscious. Jerks.
About three weeks ago a coworker and I took off from work early to run around campus and collect insects. This is fast becoming a weekly hobby for me, even if the outside temperature does feel like an oven set to broil. Not only is jumping around in the bushes with a net a great way to meet interesting people, but I love looking at the diversity of the things we collect together. On this particular day that we collected, however, I did find something that didn't go straight into a vial of ethanol or a kill jar: two queen butterfly caterpillars.
At first I thought they might be monarch butterfly larvae, but after some fast google searches I found out the difference - the queen butterfly larvae have an extra row of "horns". I've never successfully raised butterflies on my own, so I was hesitant to take them in as a pet project. What changed my mind was that they were both already in their fifth instar (a time in-between molting and growing), which is their last instar before forming their chrysalis. The other turning point was that the bush I found them on was devoid of their normal food source, and both would have potentially died, anyway.
(The second caterpillar - note the three sets of horns and the small, yellow aphids on the branch)
The first caterpillar was larger and formed its chrysalis within a week. The second one, while in its last stage, still needed more food to grow. Unfortunately, I couldn't find any more living desert milkweed plans and thought for sure it was going to starve to death. It got smaller and smaller every day, up until I spotted three more bushes (covered in hemiptera such as aphids) by the light rail station. The diet of the queen butterfly caterpillar consists of milkweed leaves and blooms, so finding three healthy, blossoming plants made me super happy. Overnight the caterpillar seemed to double in size, and within a few days it also formed its chrysalis:
This is how art works, explained eloquently via text messaging (shortly after mentioning cannibalistic tendencies):
"cool, we can have tantric demonistic sex in your leftovers, on a giant pentagram drawn on the floor in fresh blood, then make a fresh sacrifice to the dark one, then we should be ready to make some toys! sound like a plan?"
I just submitted it to textsfromlastnight, so hopefully that goes through.
Introducing: monster # 1. By the time this is finished, it will (standing straight) be anywhere between 5' to 5'10" tall. It has/will have movable joints in the shoulders, elbows, wrists, hips, knees, and ankles.
