Astronauts_Are_Missing_Out
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I will never go into space, because I do not want to drink my own recycled urine. I will never explore the Mariana Trench, because I don't like the thought of seafood that can eat me. In the end, the only likely way that I will meet bizarre and truly otherworldly creatures is on the receiving end of intergalactic sodomy. So I take a more terrestrial approach: I like bugs.
This pleases my inner Star Trek geek to no end, because insects are miniature aliens. Ants actually raise aphids in underground colonies, and milk them of nectar like cattle. Male honeybees lose their virginity by exploding, plugging the queenly orifice with their microscopic manhood. When threatened, bombardier beetles eject a burst of caustic chemicals at 120 MPH into the eyes and mouth of their enemies - from their anal cannon.
That may explain why I am presently in the basement, dissecting the genitals of mosquitos.
This is as easy as it sounds. You position the unlucky abdomen in your sights, under any decent microscope. Scalpels won't cut it, so you have to specially order needles with an ultra-fine point. For a handle, you jam it into the eraser-end of a No. 2 pencil. You then place the tip of the needle in-between the second and third abdominal segments, hold your breath, and rip.
It is, in other words, like performing open-heart surgery on Tinkerbell with a hacksaw.
I get paid to do this, and life couldn't be better. I work at the National Zoo, in Washington D.C. Housing is provided for free, and on top of that I am making better money than I have ever made: I can eat two meals a day, and occasionally I treat myself to a smoothie.
I sleep in every day: mosquitos have the sense to come out at night, so we get along just fine. We capture them by rigging up traps that look like they are cobbled together out of chewing gum and bailing wire: batteries duct-taped to coolers filled with dry ice, suspended from knots of parachute cord. We haul them up into trees while tourists on the National Mall stop and stare, slackjawed.
In Baltimore, one of the girls was mistaken for a prostitute. She was heading into the bushes.
We are studying the epidemiology of a famous disease in the urbanized environment - different species carry different diseases, and the papers written afterwards will be filled with terms like abundance and vector competence and biospatial distribution. When I tell people what I do, their face colors with confusion, followed by envy. This is D.C., the land of paperwork and bureaucratic logjams, and yet I spend half my day running through the woods.
After a few months, we can identify most of the local species by sight, and on the weekends I find myself hesitating before smacking the damn things, first checking for banded legs and median stripes on the scutum. My favorite is Psorophora ferox: a fingernail-sized, hulking beast with long black hairs on its back like a British punk rocker from 1977, but with the tips of its forelimbs blazing snow white like leather driving gloves.
I am the least educated of all my co-workers. The girls on the neighboring microscopes all have degrees in wildlife and fishery biology, and college transcripts that probably read like a table of contents from Discover magazine. One fellow spent three years in South Africa studying buffalo parasites, and the project leader did his PhD on endangered birds in Hawaii.
But I am here because I have more of a professional colage than a resume. I've trekked through marshlands - in the Bronx, where mosquito bites are the least of your concern. I know my way around a microscope. I know how to treat sucking chest wounds, and I once spent six months surrounded by corpses. And by the way, did you know that insects are awesome?
I once worked with a spider scientist in the basement of a museum. This man would work from 7pm-4am, and relax by eating a can of Chef Boyardee and watching old Greta Garbo movies. He had his own hard-written card catalogue of every movie he owned - all seven hundred of them. My girlfriend - my resident expert on all things black-and-white - had met her match.
Which is to say: SETI is looking in the wrong direction. All the aliens we need are right here.
I will never go into space, because I do not want to drink my own recycled urine. I will never explore the Mariana Trench, because I don't like the thought of seafood that can eat me. In the end, the only likely way that I will meet bizarre and truly otherworldly creatures is on the receiving end of intergalactic sodomy. So I take a more terrestrial approach: I like bugs.
This pleases my inner Star Trek geek to no end, because insects are miniature aliens. Ants actually raise aphids in underground colonies, and milk them of nectar like cattle. Male honeybees lose their virginity by exploding, plugging the queenly orifice with their microscopic manhood. When threatened, bombardier beetles eject a burst of caustic chemicals at 120 MPH into the eyes and mouth of their enemies - from their anal cannon.
That may explain why I am presently in the basement, dissecting the genitals of mosquitos.
This is as easy as it sounds. You position the unlucky abdomen in your sights, under any decent microscope. Scalpels won't cut it, so you have to specially order needles with an ultra-fine point. For a handle, you jam it into the eraser-end of a No. 2 pencil. You then place the tip of the needle in-between the second and third abdominal segments, hold your breath, and rip.
It is, in other words, like performing open-heart surgery on Tinkerbell with a hacksaw.
I get paid to do this, and life couldn't be better. I work at the National Zoo, in Washington D.C. Housing is provided for free, and on top of that I am making better money than I have ever made: I can eat two meals a day, and occasionally I treat myself to a smoothie.
I sleep in every day: mosquitos have the sense to come out at night, so we get along just fine. We capture them by rigging up traps that look like they are cobbled together out of chewing gum and bailing wire: batteries duct-taped to coolers filled with dry ice, suspended from knots of parachute cord. We haul them up into trees while tourists on the National Mall stop and stare, slackjawed.
In Baltimore, one of the girls was mistaken for a prostitute. She was heading into the bushes.
We are studying the epidemiology of a famous disease in the urbanized environment - different species carry different diseases, and the papers written afterwards will be filled with terms like abundance and vector competence and biospatial distribution. When I tell people what I do, their face colors with confusion, followed by envy. This is D.C., the land of paperwork and bureaucratic logjams, and yet I spend half my day running through the woods.
After a few months, we can identify most of the local species by sight, and on the weekends I find myself hesitating before smacking the damn things, first checking for banded legs and median stripes on the scutum. My favorite is Psorophora ferox: a fingernail-sized, hulking beast with long black hairs on its back like a British punk rocker from 1977, but with the tips of its forelimbs blazing snow white like leather driving gloves.
I am the least educated of all my co-workers. The girls on the neighboring microscopes all have degrees in wildlife and fishery biology, and college transcripts that probably read like a table of contents from Discover magazine. One fellow spent three years in South Africa studying buffalo parasites, and the project leader did his PhD on endangered birds in Hawaii.
But I am here because I have more of a professional colage than a resume. I've trekked through marshlands - in the Bronx, where mosquito bites are the least of your concern. I know my way around a microscope. I know how to treat sucking chest wounds, and I once spent six months surrounded by corpses. And by the way, did you know that insects are awesome?
I once worked with a spider scientist in the basement of a museum. This man would work from 7pm-4am, and relax by eating a can of Chef Boyardee and watching old Greta Garbo movies. He had his own hard-written card catalogue of every movie he owned - all seven hundred of them. My girlfriend - my resident expert on all things black-and-white - had met her match.
Which is to say: SETI is looking in the wrong direction. All the aliens we need are right here.