arturo la araña and other sciency stuff

So. Last Saturday I had some time on my hands and a strong urge to clean. After attacking the entire house I still wasn't satisfied and decided I would venture onto the back patio. There were tons of dead leaves and other leftovers from winter that needed to go now that spring is officially here. So, I grabbed a broom and began sweeping vigorously. Mere seconds into my sweeping, a huge black mass shot out of the pile of leaves, past my foot, and into my (wide open) back door.

AHH! I dropped the broom and ran into the house, slamming the door behind me for fear of more wild black things following me. Searching the kitchen, I couldn't find any evidence of the intruder. Then out of the corner of my eye I spotted something moving out from behind the washing machine. My first instinct was to smash it, but something stopped me: the sick urge to bring it to school and show my students. How could I possibly tell them an "it was this big" story without proof?

So I grabbed the nearest leftover container and swooped down upon the enormous wolf spider. Yes, wolf spider. Being the ridiculously squeamish girl I am, it took me a good ten minutes to work up the guts to finish the job - sliding the paper under the box, flipping it over, and clamping on the lid.

On Monday I took it to school, and after classes I got some help from the high school biology teacher. He instructed me in the ways of lethal injection (ethanol) and then taught me how to "pin" the spider's legs so that when rigor mortis set in, the legs would be spread out as if walking. About fifteen minutes later, I proudly placed my prize on my desk and shuddered at what I'd just done.

This week I've also become a new mom to a bunch of tadpoles! We learned about amphibians in life science and I (perhaps foolishly) told my students that if they brought in frog eggs we could watch them grow. The next day, Devon showed up with a little ice cream bucket full of water and eggs that she'd scooped out of a pond. So we placed them in a fishbowl and have been observing their progress over the past several days. I hope that at least one makes it to full grown frog status, but I've been told that the majority don't make it in captivity. I don't know what I will do with a bunch of dead tadpoles and just as many sad students!

Little baby froggies! Can you see the eggs?

Bad picture, but you can see how they've grown!

Over the last year and a half of teaching science, I've learned that I'm really good at killing my classroom plants. In August I even bought a bunch of hardy ivy plants but by October they were all dead. The only thing that lives in my care is bamboo and cactus. So I have a lot of those. This week I noticed that one of my cactuses is sprouting cute little hot pink flowers! This only happens once a year so it's pretty exciting. I think with these two perfectly placed blooms, it looks like an owl. Do ya see it?