This week is a mess: I gave an exam, I need to get it all graded. I have two students doing senior seminars, with rehearsals tomorrow and the day after. We have two — count ’em, TWO — faculty meetings this week. And then there’s the usual course load.
So of course this is the day another Steatoda triangulosa egg sac has to start spewing spiderlings. It doesn’t look like much right now, that blurry dark blob is the egg sac itself, and I count a whole six newly emerged spiders, but more will be coming in the next day or two. Just these few are a handful, as soon as I popped the lid they were rushing to balloon off into the sunset. We have an experiment in mind for this batch, so we’ll be setting that up real soon.
Oh, right, this also meant that this morning I was frantically scrubbing the dishes I’ve been neglecting in the sink, because we’ll need a lot more containers.
It doesn’t look like much, but tomorrow that will be a seething box of baby spiders.
Congratulations on the hatching of the spiders!
Be sure to take care of yourself, PZ.
Don’t you have work study students who could handle most of this? Especially the cleaning? I know you enjoy doing it yourself, but you’re one person and days still only have 24 hours.